Volunteers create exciting new features

TEENAGE volunteers used their creative skills and talents to transform Walton Zoo at Walton Gardens, Warrington.
Volunteers aged 16-19 from Warrington Youth Volunteering project worked in partnership with the rangers at the zoo, to create new signs, produce leaflets and make over the information centre, to improve the experience for children and visitors, especially those with a learning difficulty or visual impairment.
The project took place over the summer, with the volunteers getting involved in taking photos, research, design planning, painting. etc.
The volunteers have transformed the information centre with a fun giant mural using tactile textures to aid children with a visual impairment. They have also composed an informative poem about the animals at the zoo. Outside the zoo, the creative group have produced new child-friendly signs for the animal enclosures that introduce Makaton, a form of sign language. To complement all these new features they have created new factual and fun trail leaflets to follow and colour in.
Emily Ashurst, the Project Worker leading the group said: “ All of the volunteers have worked really hard together as a team, their efforts have paid off, the end result is fantastic…the volunteers said they wanted to give something back to a place which many of them enjoyed visiting as children, they have certainly done that.”
Their outstanding achievements have been recognised with a national v50 award.
To find out more about youth volunteering and V in Warrington text: 07846883616
Volunteers pictured above who took part in the project were: Heather Walton, Sarah Hinchcliffe, Leah Davenport, Lindsey Brooks, Lauren Taylor, Natalie Whitehurst, Gemma Cowley, Helen Grayson and Rebecca Murphy.