DOBBINS HEIGHTS — Thursday was the first time visiting the North Carolina Zoo for 17 children from Dobbins Heights thanks to support from Enviva as part of the company’s week-long Earth Day celebrations.
Retired police officer June Gadsden, who last year started tutoring students after school at New Bethel A.M.E Zion Church, made a list of places her students wanted to go and then narrowed it down to places they had never been. At the top of the list was the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, which is the world’s largest natural habitat zoo, according to its website.
“I can’t even describe how much these kids enjoyed it,” Gadsden said. “It was a perfect day.”
Gadsden said taking 20 children and their chaperones to the zoo was far outside of her’s and New Bethel’s budget, so she reached out to Chris Brown, community relations manager with Enviva, for help. Enviva donated five computers to New Bethel’s after school program last year.
Not only did Enviva cover the cost of the trip, but Brown joined them.
“I think my coworkers were jealous,” Brown said. “We support (the after school program) because it makes a difference in how the kids are performing in school and that’s a positive thing for the community.”
Out of the 20 children that took the trip, 17 had never been to a zoo despite living an hour away from the largest natural habitat zoo in the world. They walked the enormous facility for three hours. Gadsden said the first “oohs and aahs” came when the giraffes walked up, towering over the young children between the ages of 3 and 15. The African elephants, which — much to the shock of the children — were brown, also got a big reaction.
The lions, however, were asleep.
One child, Gadsden said, couldn’t believe the elephants were real. He told Gadsden that he had seen the movie “Jaws” and knew that the shark was a robot and apparently applied that logic to the elephants, even convincing other children.
“He said ‘Mrs. June elephants aren’t even brown, they’re grey,’” Gadsden said. “I think he was afraid to admit that he was having an experience that was beyond his imagination, and he wasn’t the only one to feel that way.”
Gadsden said one of the most outgoing children clung to her the whole time out of fear. The youngest child started screaming as soon as the giraffe walked up and never left her buggy. Other children thought that the lions ate each other or were fed humans.
“They’re imaginations are so wild, that’s all stuff they’ve seen on T.V.,” Gadsden said. “If you’ve never been to the zoo — those animals (at the North Carolina Zoo) are very well kept — they’re huge and they’re beautiful but it kind of blew my mind. I’ve never seen a brown elephant, and the way it moved it could’ve been a robot. It just didn’t look real!”
One child had broken his leg when his class went to the zoo and was the only one who couldn’t experience it, but he wouldn’t miss this chance. Gadsden said he was waiting at the church with his grandmother at 6:15 a.m. when they weren’t scheduled to leave until 7 a.m. His grandmother told Gadsden that he couldn’t sleep because he was so excited.
“It was amazing for them to see that this is real and to encourage them to step outside of Dobbins Heights,” Gadsden said. “It’s not that hard. It’s not impossible.”
The next trip Gadsden has planned for the children of her after-school class is a trip to see a baseball game live. For those interested in donating or getting more information, call Gadsden at 678-670-6247 or her husband, Pastor David Gadsden at 704-572-6100.
