{"id":1834,"date":"2025-08-18T19:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T19:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/?p=1834"},"modified":"2026-04-07T13:21:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T13:21:43","slug":"the-impact-of-a-volunteer-my-experience-at-friends-of-the-reedy-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/the-impact-of-a-volunteer-my-experience-at-friends-of-the-reedy-river\/","title":{"rendered":"The impact of a volunteer: My experience at Friends of the Reedy River"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Headshot<\/p>\n

It’s a humid Wednesday at 7:30 in the morning. Despite the early hour, the South Carolina heat has already begun to sink into the ground and leech onto you. As you walk along the Swamp Rabbit Trail, right between Linky Stone Park and Unity Park, a group of sweaty men, women, and children comes into view. These are just some of the dedicated volunteers, tasked with pulling Johnson grass, shoveling mulch, and enduring the hot sun. These people are some of the most important parts of Friends of the Reedy River.<\/p>\n

My name is Miranda Glenn and I am a Junior Politics and International Affairs major. My role as one of the Watershed Conservation Fellows at Friends of the Reedy River has entailed a little bit of everything. From waking up at the crack of dawn to pull weeds at Reedy River Meadow to creating a database of native nurseries to distribute to volunteers, I have had the opportunity to give back to the community that has affected me so greatly.<\/p>\n

One of my projects this summer has been to collect all of the volunteer information from Reedy River Cleanups from previous years. The Reedy River Cleanups in the fall and spring gather hundreds of volunteers each, all searching to help create change. This, of course, meant a lot of information to centralize. This document of every volunteer and their days of experience showed a list of repeats. I saw families who had made a tradition of coming to cleanups every year. I saw names of my peers at Furman, college students who had taken time out of their lives to help a small non-profit. I saw a community, driven over and over again to do the hard work of cleaning up one of Greenville’s most important landmarks.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Leading a demonstration at Roper Mountain Science Center<\/p><\/div>\n

Friends of the Reedy River has made huge changes over the years, but much of this change comes from those willing to put in hours of labor and volunteer work. FoRR is run by a small staff of two employees. Two people working day and night for a cause they love. This means that much of what I worked on over this summer would not be possible without the people of Greenville to help. The work at Reedy River ensures the water stays free of additional pollution, native wildlife is protected and secure, and all members of the community have access to our ecologically vibrant river.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Volunteers working on sheet mulching to help smother weeds<\/p><\/div>\n

You can also be a part of this change by volunteering with Friends of the Reedy River! The fall cleanup is coming up soon, as well as several smaller events that involve weeding, gardening, and litter pick-ups, and FoRR need the people of Greenville for these projects.<\/p>\n

If you want to learn more about Friends of the Reedy Rivers mission and some of the important topics surrounding watershed conservation, visit one of our speaker series events!<\/p>\n

Friends of the Reedy River website: https:\/\/www.friendsofthereedyriver.org\/the-reedy-river<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a humid Wednesday at 7:30 in the morning. Despite the early hour, the South Carolina heat has already begun to sink into the ground and leech onto you. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1834"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1837,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions\/1837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/shi-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}