by Heather Riske | Jun 24, 2024
Angela Mahianyu, a rising ninth grader at Westminster Christian Academy, has always loved animals – especially giraffes and elephants. So when she found out about the opportunity to help build her own youth program with the Saint Louis Zoo, she didn’t need much convincing.
Over the past three months, Mahianyu and students from various middle and high schools across the St. Louis region have been developing ideas for a youth program at the upcoming Saint Louis Zoo WildCare Park. The world-class safari park and conservation center is slated to open on 425 acres in north St. Louis County in 2027.
In order to give community members a say in what the youth program looks like, the Zoo teamed up with the Community Innovation and Action Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis to implement a co-design process with area students. The collaborative process actively involves all stakeholders to ensure that all needs are met.
“We understand the need to make sure that their voices are heard,” said the Zoo’s Assistant Director of Education Jaclyn C. Johnson. “We don’t want to do cookie-cutter programming, taking what we’ve already done at the main campus and then just applying it at WildCare Park. Knowing that all communities are different, we want to build upon the things that they really want and desire, and not just what we think that they want to be involved in.”
The group of 25 students, ranging in ages from 13 to 18, worked together to come up with three distinct ideas for youth programming at the park: Digital Habitats, Nature Race and STEM Animal Tracks.
