DOWAGIAC — A new collaboration is coming to Dowagiac, with a goal to get more youth involved in conservation efforts.

The Dowagiac Conservation Club is sponsoring “A Universe at Your Front Door” hosted at the Dowagiac District Library to encourage youth to participate in more programs funded through the Conservation Club. The event will include a visit from the Kalamazoo Nature Center from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 12, where representatives will bring several animal ambassadors, including some Michigan specific animals.

The idea for the event came from the youth funds chair at the Dowagiac Conservation Club, Stephanie Lyons. Lyons has already been volunteering with the club for years, but recently started doing more fundraisers to raise money for the club’s youth fund.

Every year, the conservation club raises money to go directly into the fund. This year, Lyons wanted to branch out and impact the community, she said. She thought the library would be a great place to do that. After reaching out and offering to sponsor a program, the library helped advertise the event. Lyons’ goal is to get children more involved and informed about the conservation club.

“We try to do things at our club, and we just don’t seem to have people attend as much,” she said. “We want to make sure we are getting our name out there and that we are trying to do stuff for the youth in the community.”

While researching possible programs, Lyons came across the Kalamazoo Nature Center and noticed it had a program tailored to a similar theme as the library’s summer reading program, A Universe of Stories.

“I felt like that was the best program to start with this year,” Lyons said.

As of now, this is the first scheduled program between the conservation club and the library, but Lyons is hopeful there will be more collaborative events in the future.

“I’m hoping this is something we are able to continue as long as we are able to sustain the fund through fundraising and those efforts,” she said.

Besides just bringing a program to the library, the club also budgets enough money to send programs to the elementary schools and to send children to summer camp. This year, the club sent a record-breaking number of students to summer camp, Lyons said, but added it can be a challenge to find children to extend the invite to.

“I feel like over the past few years we don’t have as much youth in the club,” Lyons said.

The Dowagiac Conservation Club also used its youth fund to purchase $300 worth of books to place in the city’s Little Free Libraries spaced out across Dowagiac. Lyons said the books are all nature related and have outdoor adventure themes. Once the rest of the libraries are constructed, she plans to get the club involved in placing the books in the libraries throughout the time frame of a few months.

Overall, Lyons’ wish for the event and future partnership with the library is to introduce children in Dowagiac to conservation ideas.

“We partner with the library because they have a whole different crowd of people they are targeting that we don’t get to see at the conservation club,” Lyons said.