Hull Award Winner
Jane Ellison
Richard "Buster” Banis was nominated by SLGC for The Garden Club of America Elizabeth Abernathy Hull Award …..and he has won!
He is an educator who embodies "providing outstanding education for our youth through working with children in the environment. He has inspired the appreciation of the beauty and fragility of our planet" through introducing his students to the wonderful world of birding.
Buster is a teacher in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, though is much more than a daily presence in front of a classroom. Buster is a committed mentor and advocate for his pupils and delights in sharing his love of birding and the outdoors with them. Buster's students at East Clark School in the Collinwood neighborhood do not all have the advantages we would wish for every child and Buster's ongoing efforts engaging children outdoors supports a critical part of their development.
Buster receiving his award at the membership meeting at Edwins Too.
Buster created a program annually rewarding positive school actions treating the winners to an entire day with him centered around birding. He next began "The East Clark Bird Nerds," their after school club. The experiences offered were so very different from anything in the environmental desert in which the students lived, helping develop in them a lifelong love of birding, the outdoors, and of nature.
Buster has applied for and received numerous grants although he pays for most of the Bird Nerd excursions and meals himself. He did secure funds to travel to "The Biggest Week in American Birding" at Magee Marsh on the shores of Lake Erie and The Nerds added an overnight field trip!
The Bird Nerds will be planting native plants to host insects for the birds for our upcoming flower show “A Fantasy.”
Without question Buster truly exemplifies the contribution an individual can make to inspiring in our youth the appreciation of the natural wonders of this planet and is especially deserving of the Hull Award as the children he takes under his wing have almost no other opportunity to experience the marvels of our natural world.
Buster truly is a winner in every way.