My experience at Creekside Discovery Centre

Hey, there! I’m Eleni, a Year 10 student doing work experience at the Creekside Discovery Center in Deptford. My mum found this place via Facebook and thought it would be great for me as I really enjoy being outdoors and immersed in nature. So I definitely recommend coming here if you enjoy wildlife/care about environmental causes as there is a lot of conservation work going on here.

On Monday, I supported a group of Year 5 students and the highlight of my day was going in the Creek with kids while our education deliverer explained different things about Deptford’s history and some of the geography of the river. After the children had left, I cleaned up and helped with stacking tables onto chairs.

On Tuesday, I mostly did the same thing but it was with Y3 students and a different group of volunteers were there to help. I organized a box of walking sticks used for going into the river in order of size, which staff were grateful for.

Eleni's amazingly organised sticks - we wish they were always like this!

On Wednesday, I spent time with volunteers doing conservation work. It was nice being in the sun and doing physical work. Later on in the day, one of our conservationists, who is an expert in flowers, helped me to identify 90 different species of flowers. He pointed out that this is actually below average in the summertime – which is crazy to me! It just proves what a biodiverse place Deptford Creek is.

Thursday was an exciting day of filming wildlife with a group of Y7s from a local school. An expert came in to lead the students and everyone came into the river to film. I really enjoyed this day because the students were very engaged and it was lovely working in the beautiful sunshine!

I am writing this on Friday, my last day. Today I have been delving a little into administration work and all the behind the scenes stuff that makes everything Creekside Discovery Centre does possible. I’ve done some laminating of different posters for events taking place in the near future and later I’m going off site with our administrator to film an educational video about electronic waste caused by vaping.

Overall, my time at Deptford Creekside Discovery Centre has been excellent! The working environment here is great; people have been fairly relaxed and instructions I’ve been given are clear. I’ve loved meeting the staff and all the volunteers and going into the river, doing things like river dipping. I think I’ve improved on different social skills and my abilities with working with kids. I particularly enjoyed the conservation work. I will definitely be volunteering here in the future!

Eleni taking pictures of the summer wildflowers at Creekside - thanks for all your help during the week Eleni! From all at Creekside.