A
volunteer program created and run by students brings young hospital patients
and their families outdoors and demonstrates the rejuvenating power of nature.
By
Rebecca Liebschutz and Elise Matatall
Matthaei-Nichols
student interns and U-M’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital staff put their heads
together last year to connect kids at Mott with nature at nearby Nichols
Arboretum. The program, called Wild About Nature, was created by student interns
with the help of the children’s education department at Matthaei-Nichols. Wild
About Nature launched in 2014 and has been running monthly programs for
siblings of families at the hospital since January of 2015. As a way to take
advantage of the plants blooming this summer, we recently started offering
weekday guided hikes, in which Wild About Nature volunteers walk with the
families through the Arb and discuss the plants and animals that surround them.
Julie
Piazza, the Project Manager of Child & Family Life at Mott and a key
supporter of Wild About Nature, discussed the benefits of getting people in the
hospital out in nature. “It’s a distraction from the hospital environment,”
Piazza explains, “because it allows the families to be out in nature, which provides
an element of comfort and a sense of calm. Nature itself softens the hospital
environment,” she continues, and creates “a bridge to healing.” Nature lovers
have been claiming this for years but there is growing evidence that
interacting with nature does indeed reduce stress levels and can boost the
immune system—an essential part of healing.
Patients
often travel great distances to be seen by Mott’s world-class doctors, and
they’re often fatigued, far from home, and worried about family. Exploring the
Arb with trained volunteers enhances their experience as visitors to the
hospital and to Ann Arbor. Says Piazza, “What we’re trying to embrace here at
Mott is place-based education. You’re in the hospital, but you need to know
what’s around you to heal. It’s important to know the hospital surroundings but
also outside resources and the community that you are now a part of.” They’ll
remember that experience forever, she adds, and if they find themselves in the
hospital setting again they’ll say “‘wow, I get to come and see the Arb’ and
they’ll know what’s outside their window a little bit more.”
Starting
with a pilot program about insects in November 2014, Wild About Nature has
since grown to include a faerie house-making activity, a hot-chocolate workshop,
and a peony scavenger hunt, among others. Each program involves an outdoor
adventure component as well as a craft, such as making peonies with pipe
cleaners and tissue paper or “growing” a paper cacao tree. At this time,
volunteers and hospital staff are focused on quality over quantity. The
hospital environment is quite different from the Botanical Gardens (where
Children’s Education runs programs with up to 100 kids at a time!) and the
program staff and volunteers must focus on outreach and marketing to connect
with patients who might not know about the program yet.
Students
on Board in Large Numbers
Wild
About Nature’s pilot year involved recruiting volunteers to help lead programs
and engage children and families at Mott. Student interest was overwhelming and
the volunteer team is now composed of 15 University of Michigan college
students. Volunteer Alex Meilhac says, “I got involved because I was looking
for a non-traditional way to volunteer and make a difference in our community.
What I love about Wild About Nature is that it strives to help young patients
and their families to take a break from being in the hospital and enjoy the
soothing effects of nature. The most rewarding part is knowing that we are
doing something new, something that has never been done before at Mott Hospital
and that has the potential to impact the recovery of patients who need an
avenue of escape from the stress of being in a clinical setting.”
Volunteers
and Mott staff have worked to design programs that are more flexible and can be
adapted to a range of ages and abilities while adjusting to the fluid nature of
the Family Center, in which families come and go continuously. This open and
flexible mindset has enabled more children to get involved during the program
period and to feel engaged. According to Wild About Nature volunteer Alex
Kolenda, “It is super great getting to know the kids and teaching them a thing
or two about nature. At the same time, I love being able to learn so much about
nature myself! I enjoy volunteering for the program because I feel like I am
learning so much—about both ecology and the environment these kids experience
while in the hospital.” The volunteers’ devotion has allowed the emergence of
weekday hikes, a more informal way of enjoying the Arboretum and knowing what
one is seeing throughout.
In
addition to providing weekday hikes for children and their families, Wild About
Nature also offers weekly hikes for postpartum women from the Von Voigtlander
Women’s Hospital (which is combined with Mott). According to Piazza, the hikes
fulfilled a need that had been there all along. “Mothers had wanted this before
and were looking for something like this. [It’s] almost like permission to take
a break.”
Moving
forward, there is much potential for a program like this in the adult hospital,
since everyone can heal and find respite in nature, not just women and
children. Says Piazza, “We need to make this happen in the adult hospital …
within the next year, this will only grow! I feel like there are ways we can
make this happen and help people enjoy this resource.” Volunteer Alex Kolenda
feels similarly, saying “as time goes on, the program will have more and more
of a [positive] reputation at the hospital and will therefore have more and
more participation. I can see more university students wanting to get involved,
too.”
Rebecca
Liebschutz, from Albany, N.Y., graduated from U-M this May with degrees in
Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics and Program in the Environment.
She is interested in working in sustainable development and agriculture policy.
Rebecca is working as a children’s programs intern funded
by the Ann Arbor Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association.
Elise Matatall, originally from Denver, CO, is a graduate student in the U-M School of Social Work. She has been fortunate to participate in a specialized child welfare scholarship program at U-M. Her work-study position with children's education and the Wild About Nature project have been immensely helpful in informing her practice as a child and family therapist, where she often incorporates the healing power of nature.
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| Rebecca Liebschutz (left) and Elise Matatall in front of Willow Pond at Matthaei. |
