Conservation Clubhouse

“What we learn with pleasure we never forget.”

Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives revived a popular program this past fall and named the program Conservation Clubhouse. Conservation Clubhouse is also proving to be another success.

The program, 25-minutes presentation and 20-minutes hands-on, involves biologists talking to students in the fourth grade and beyond about electrical safety and efficiency and other things pertaining to the electric cooperative. The big stars of the show, however, are the reptiles and amphibians the biologists bring for students to look at, learn from, and touch. All the reptiles (snakes) and amphibians (frogs and salamanders) used in the program are native to Kentucky; all are nonvenomous and tame.

According to recent Conservation Clubhouse participant South Kentucky RECC, this environmental education program remains, to date, one of the most popular programs ever offered by the distribution cooperative, as proven by those now in their late 20s who still offer comments on how they saw it in elementary school and what an impact it had on them.

South Kentucky RECC is offering the program to fourth grade classes within its service territory. The program goes hand-in-hand with the Kentucky Common Core State Standards content taught for this school year.

Most recently, SKRECC presented the program to Southern Elementary School in Pulaski County; however, every school in the co-op’s service territory has been or will be visited over the course of this school year. The program will be offered again in the fall.

Currently, about eight of the 16 Kentucky Touchstone Energy Cooperatives are participating in the program, with more expected to offer in the future.

Appearing in the slide show, other Kentucky electric cooperative participants Farmers RECC and Owen Electric.