the season to volunteer

While recreation on the beaches, on the trail and at your favorite outdoor bar tends to be the focus of most summer activities, there are also ample opportunities to give back while getting outside. A variety of organizations offer volunteer opportunities. Here are a few.

For eager environmentalists who also happen to be beach enthusiasts, the Blue Ocean Society of Portsmouth invites volunteers on monthly beach cleans-ups. With so many summer visitors taking advantage of New Hampshire’s limited number of beaches and coastal waters, trash inevitably builds up, with cigarette butts, food packaging and commercial fishing litter along the shore.

the season to volunteer

While recreation on the beaches, on the trail and at your favorite outdoor bar tends to be the focus of most summer activities, there are also ample opportunities to give back while getting outside. A variety of organizations offer volunteer opportunities. Here are a few.

For eager environmentalists who also happen to be beach enthusiasts, the Blue Ocean Society of Portsmouth invites volunteers on monthly beach cleans-ups. With so many summer visitors taking advantage of New Hampshire’s limited number of beaches and coastal waters, trash inevitably builds up, with cigarette butts, food packaging and commercial fishing litter along the shore.

On Sunday, June 8, the society is hosting a clean-up at Foss Beach in Rye to celebrate World Oceans Day. And from June 29 to July 5, it’s hoping to have a clean-up in each Seacoast town each day of the week for Clean Beaches Week. Interested volunteers can visit www.blueoceansociety.org for more information. Most clean-ups are on Saturday mornings and take only a few hours.

If combing the beach for debris doesn’t sound appealing, the society is also looking for volunteers to serve as educators on whale watch tours and help with its touch-tank program. The tank, located on the sunny Isles of Shoals Steamship Company dock, will be filled with inter-tidal plants and animals. Volunteers are needed to educate the public about the touch tank’s critters.

Another organization that invites volunteers out to the beaches is the New Hampshire Chapter of Surfriders (www.surfrider.org/newhampshire). In addition to beach clean-ups, this group of surfers and surf enthusiasts also do water quality sampling at beaches in New Hampshire and southern Maine.

For some, a little shelter from the sun might be in order. The York Land Trust is looking for volunteers to go out on monitoring walks in its woodland properties. The walks generally take two to three hours and are scheduled the first Wednesday or the third Saturday of each month. Monitoring walk volunteers look for trash, trail obstructions and other irregularities on the trust’s properties. For more information and a schedule of monitoring walks, visit www.yorklandtrust.org.
With its close proximity to Portsmouth and other Seacoast destinations, Mount Agamenticus is another hot spot for a cool getaway during the summer. In addition to walking the mountain’s extensive trail network, there are also plenty of opportunities to help maintain the area’s beauty and accessibility.

“There are five scheduled community volunteer workdays, where folks can come and work alongside the crew to repair some of the trails,” said Robin Stanley, Conservation Coordinator for the Mount Agamenticus Conservation Region. Work can include light trail maintenance, rerouting trails from fragile habitat and helping with the native planting project.

Volunteers are also needed for the “adopt a trail” maintenance and monitoring program. According to Stanley, this is a good option for people who can’t make it to scheduled workdays. People who adopt a trail must go through orientation training. Afterward, they can enlist other volunteers to help with their portions of trail.

“There are also things for folks who don’t want to get their hands dirty,” Stanley said. Volunteers are needed to work on the summit as public outreach and education representatives. “There’s lots of things and lots of work to do, and many hands make light work,” she added. These opportunities and others are listed at www.agamenticus.org. Stanley encourages people to pre-register for volunteer events.

Your friends want to meet up at the bar? For green-minded folks who are more interested in socializing than volunteering, Portsmouth Green Drinks is a great way to get involved in the environment on a more philosophical level. The group organizes informal gatherings for environmentally-minded people of all ages and walks of life.

“The purpose of Green Drinks is primarily FUN, but the events also enable people to: share new ideas, develop inspired solutions, learn about opportunities to work for change and to make a difference, discuss the state of the world … Green Drinks can be whatever you want it to be,” reads a statement on the group’s blog.

The Portsmouth chapter of Green Drinks invites speakers to Poco’s Bow Street Cantina in Portsmouth on the third Thursday of the month. In June, representatives from Sea Solar Store will be presenting. In July, the featured group is Green Alliance, a green marketing group. In August, Seacoast Buy Local will present. 

Another way to get involved with the environment is to volunteer for a municipal energy committee. A number of towns throughout the Seacoast have these committees, which seek to reduce their municipality’s energy consumption. In Kittery, the recently formed energy committee has been active in projects ranging from an energy audit to installing a wind turbine.
“It’s a sprawling task and there is so much to do,” said Sarah Brown, a member of the Kittery Energy Committee and a lead organizer for many things green in the Portsmouth area. “There are tons of ways that people could help out.”

Volunteers are needed to do the legwork and run the numbers for the town’s energy audit, and to help the committee start a garden behind the middle school. Also, with Kittery’s first wind turbine about to go up, the council will be looking for other opportunities for alternative energy sources. Volunteers will be needed to research potential sites and canvas neighborhoods.
“If there is somebody interested in a specific energy project, we have all those on our radar,” Brown said. Getting involved with an Energy Committee, like the ones in Kittery, Rye, Rochester or Durham, offers a more sustained, long-term time investment. It’s also a good way for people who are ready to take on a leadership role to get involved.

“Many towns now have an energy committee. And if people find there isn’t one, they could start one. It really just takes one person and they’ll find out there are all sorts of people interested,” Brown said. She encourages anyone interested in helping out to contact her at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

If you’re looking for everyday ways to help the environment, the Great Bay Discover Center’s Energy/Sustainability Day will educate guests about energy conservation and sustainable living. The event will be held on Saturday, May 31, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Discovery Center in Greenland. Vendors will offer organic and energy efficient products and give demonstrations on worm composting, gardening techniques, water saving devices and transportation alternatives. You can even try out a Segway.

Guests can also check out the Hugh Gregg Coastal Conservation Center’s geo-thermal heat/cool air system and composting toilets, and get a preview of the Gregg Center’s porous pavement project, which begins in June. Information will be available from Water Street Books, community groups and local farms.

The Great Bay Discovery Center and Hugh Gregg Coastal Conservation Center are located at 89 Depot Road on the town line between Greenland and Stratham. Call 603-778-0015 for more information.