The Town of Chapel Hill in collaboration with 97.9 The Hill WCHL & Chapelboro.com present “Our Town: Stories of Chapel Hill.” Each month you’ll hear from the people at the heart of your local government who are learning, serving, and working together to build a community where people thrive. This month, Nikki Cherry and Karin Michel and from Parks and Recreation and the Library tell the story of making the summer season fun for kids and families in Chapel Hill.
Karin Michel: Summertime at Chapel Hill Public Library is super fun. We see tons of people of all ages and from all walks of life to attend programs, pick out books, just to be with other people. We have great trails that are co-managed with our Parks and Recreation partners, so people use our outdoor spaces as well as our indoor spaces. And it is always busy. It’s always fun. There’s always a lot of action going on.
Nikki Cherry: Summer at Parks and Recreation is our busiest time of the year. We absolutely enjoy it. We serve between 1,000 and 1,200 children a day, and throughout the course of the summer, which is typically seven to nine weeks. We host traditional summer camps at three locations, and then we have our teen camp that is also inside of one of those locations as well.
Michel: Summer reading is one of the marquee events that we do at the public library. I think we have 3,500 people signed up for summer reading this year. So that’s a big number. It’s all about encouraging people of all ages, kids for sure, to stay engaged with reading over the summer months. And for kids, the benefit is that reading regularly when they’re out of school helps them maintain the skills that they need to succeed when they go back to school. Things that really resonate for me are when we have families or kids that come back years later and talk about how much summer reading meant to them, or the activities of the library, how much they enjoyed them, or having parents tell us that their kids’ reading skills really improved as a direct result of participating, and that they were so excited to participate in the summer reading program, and it really helped build them as a reader. And usually that happens at the early elementary age.
Cherry: One of the things that is very special to me with the children that are growing up inside of our programs, is when those same children come back to work for our agency and become a part of our camp counselor group. I do believe that children that are in our programs have a better experience than those that do not have the opportunity to participate in our programs. I think it is absolutely priceless the way that we have that impact on the community and the way that we serve. I feel like if we are not able to serve, then our job is useless. I do it because of the passion that I have for it, and the way that it makes me feel helping someone, and how I feel like I have accomplished something. When I’m able to get up from my desk and go over to the camp sites or work in the background to make sure that everything about camp runs very smoothly, I’m doing something because I love it, and that is what makes me come to work every single day.
Michel: Nikki, I totally agree with you on a lot of what you said there in terms of what my passion is, what inspires me to keep going. It’s really about community and about serving. There’s a slightly different angle when you’re talking about library services versus Parks and Recreation services, but the enthusiasm and the making the connections is really where it’s at. We appreciate a lot about our colleagues in Parks and Recreation and we have the opportunity to partner pretty frequently, but you know, whenever there’s a possibility to partner on something where we both have an interest or a skillset that could benefit each other, sending library staff to Parks and Recreation After School programs is one example of that. But in the summers in the past, sometimes we (library staff) also went to the summer camps. I really appreciate the volume that Parks and Recreation deals with day in, day out during the summer season.
Cherry: We have to have the library be at our events. Whenever we have them, they set up amazingly well. We really do appreciate that. And the flexibility that our partners from the library give us, it can be spur of the moment, and they always figure out a way to come and help us serve the community, and that’s very beneficial to us, and we really appreciate that.
Sign up for Our Town, a weekly email with cool stories like this and all the latest news from the town.
Feature image: Music with Pierce Freelon, via Chapel Hill Public Library
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
