Hi everyone, I am Mina Pham. I am a junior at Georgia State University, majoring in Chemistry. For spring 2024, I am currently enrolled in Honors 3280: Service-Learning Seminar in Urban Ecology and Environmental Conservation by Dr. Shannon Finck. I have volunteered for a non-profit organization called Open Hand for the past year. It was my first time doing volunteer work in environmental conservation. I am thrilled to get some hands-on experience and learn more about our nature. Since the beginning of the semester, I have been introduced to different readings to have a prepared mindset before getting into the field. The readings demonstrate that the nature we live in nowadays is also concerning. There should be some changes that we have to make now before things get even worse. Now, it is an opportunity to serve and give back to the community.

Water is essential to all living beings. I, personally, like to be submerged in fresh water. Unfortunately, our water resources are heavily polluted due to many factors: oil spillage from industries, sewage from factories, trash thrown into rivers by humans, etc. I grew up in a developing country where clean water might not be available to every household. People might also not even be able to afford water. So, I appreciate the water that I get access to. My community partner match is Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. I want to use this opportunity to serve the community by helping clean parts of the Chattahoochee River, which supplies 70 percent of metro Atlanta’s drinking water. Therefore, I am eager to learn more about cleaning our water source from Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. I have discovered that Chattahoochee Riverkeeper is known for employing “trash traps” to remove floating litter from urban streams. These devices catch floating garbage from stormwater runoff, and our 14 trash traps have collected more than 10,000 pounds of floating trash since 2019. Multiple activities are offered, such as litter cleanup and analysis, water sampling, pollution tracking, speaking events, workshops, and social media. I am excited about taking samples of water and putting them under analysis. From this service assignment, I look forward to building more profound knowledge about protecting our water sources and water sampling.