A petting zoo, live bands and representatives from 11 student groups and 12 community groups will be among the offerings of the Furman Earth Day Festival to be held on Saturday, April 20 by the lake.
Local sustainability organizations and student groups will have information, food and display booths set up in front of the Greenbelt Housing. The Shi Center will be open for tours, and a children’s area, complete with petting zoo, will be on the Furman Farm.
Tours will also be available at both the Place of Peace and the Thoreau Cabin. Live music, arranged through an agreement with Charleston vendor Awendaw Green, will be featured from 1-6 p.m. in the amphitheater.
Greenbelt RA and student group coordinator of the event Claire Campbell had the idea for an Earth Day celebration last May and quickly partnered with the Shi Center on the idea. Water Walk was the first community group to get involved with the extensive planning; as the event transitioned from a Greenbelt/North Village event to a community-wide gathering, Sunrift, Friends of the Reedy River and Slow Food Upstate were among the included organizations.
“Once we teamed up with Water Walk,” said Campbell, “we realized this was going to be a lot bigger than we anticipated.”
Among the student groups represented are the Environmental Action Group, the Furman University Outdoor Club, Tri-Beta, Furman in the Garden and the Furman Farm. Campbell was excited to see the unified enthusiasm emerge across the groups.
“To have something this huge come out of such a small plan is awesome,” she said.
Involvement has come in an unusual form from Furman athletics as well: the men’s soccer team is hosting a 5 on 5 soccer tournament on April 19 from noon to four, raising awareness environmental issues. Alongside the art department, they will be collecting non-organic trash at the soccer tournament to create a mural of the world to be displayed at the next day’s Earth Day celebration.
Cassie Klatka, Shi Center Coordinator, explained that the Earth Day fair was about spreading awareness of environmental activism throughout Greenville.
“Our view is to help showcase what the student and campus groups are doing, as well as the community groups,” she said. “I think a lot of people have heard the term ‘sustainability’ but they don’t necessarily know what it encompasses.”
In the 1990s, Furman hosted similar Earth Day events both on the Furman Mall and downtown. Klatka is optimistic that a successful fair could create a tradition in years to come.
“No one has really done a large event on campus like this for Earth Day in decades,” she said. “If it goes really well I think it’s a great idea… I’d like to see it become even more across campus.”
Campbell and Klatka estimate that around a thousand people may attend the event. To facilitate crowds, Greenlink has agreed to provide a shuttle to get people to and from the fair, running fifteen-minute loops around campus.