United Way of Virginia's Eastern Shore Will Help Support SPARK

United Way of Virginia’s Eastern Shore has announced that they will allocate funding to support Chincoteague Bay Field Station’s Shore People Advancing Readiness for Knowledge (SPARK) program this year.  SPARK is an intergenerational education program which has engaged hundreds of families from Accomack County in advancing reading and math skills through outdoor and place-based learning opportunities since its inception in 1998.

The SPARK program was created by Grace and Matt Cormons and has recently been taken under the educational programming at Chincoteague Bay Field Station. This spring the program has been supported by a Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Funding from United Way will be used to support the Creekwatchers branch of SPARK, in which students participate in citizen-science projects to monitor water quality on local streams and bays, and also to support SPARK Mentors, parents who help facilitate programming.