Volunteering with the bugs!

Do you live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida? Enjoy butterflies and gardening? Have a little spare time on your hands and thing volunteering might be for you? Check out these two main types of volunteers for the BioWorks Butterfly Garden @ MOSI and see if either has some appeal to you!

Butterfly Docent: Minimum age for volunteering in this position is 14. With provided training docents should be able to talk to guests and explain general themes of butterflies and butterfly gardening as well as make sure that guests do not touch the butterflies and plants. Some light cleaning and gardening to help keep the butterfly garden and grounds in shape is expected. Butterfly Docents generally stay inside the Flight Encounter so that it can have longer open hours for museum guests. Once trained, Butterfly Docents may work any day of the week. In the event of inclement weather, Butterfly Docents will be responsible for politely ushering guests out of the Flight Encounter and securing the butterfly garden enclosure for the duration of the storm. The Butterfly Garden @ MOSI is not open during lightning storms and reopens no earlier than 15 minutes after inclement weather has passed.

Butterfly Garden Assistant: Minimum age for volunteering for this position is 18. Butterfly Garden Assistants will be involved in the day to day upkeep of the butterfly rearing program and garden grounds. This may include several hours per shift outside in the elements. Light to heavy weeding may be requested as well as some small housekeeping tasks like sweeping of sidewalks or cleaning up an area to improve its appeal to guests. Insect collection and feeding is required in this position and volunteers must be comfortable handling non-poisonous insects. Butterfly Garden Volunteers are encouraged to be highly independent and able to assess concerns or lab needs and deal with them on a basis of priority. As a volunteer you will be encouraged to drastically increase your knowledge of plants, butterflies and gardening in general.

See something you like? Drop me an email and lets get talking about volunteering with the bugs.