Longboat Key Garden Club sends 16 students to Mote camp

The Longboat Key Garden Club sent the most children in its history to summer camp at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium this year. 

Sixteen children who live on Longboat Key or whose parents work on the island got fully funded scholarships for weeklong camps at Mote thanks to members specifically donating to the summer camp fund.

Garden Club President Melanie Dale said it's one of the best ways to support the club's mission of encouraging an interest in environmental concerns from a young age.

"We adopted a new motto this year: the community is our garden," said Dale. "This has nothing to do with whether or not financially they can take care of it. It's just our way of giving back and saying thank you to the people that are on Longboat and for all the support and donations that they give the Garden Club, year after year and season after season."

The only requirements for this scholarship are that the children have to be between the ages of 5 and 12 and they have to live on Longboat or be children of people who work on Longboat. This year, children of Longboat Key first responders and Publix employees were sent to the camps in June.

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Dale hopes that she will continue to get more Longboat children to sign up for the scholarship next year. There is no limit on how many children can sign up. The Garden Club does not reject anyone's application for this scholarship. 

This is one of five scholarships the Garden Club sponsors. The club also offers scholarships for children to attend Marie Selby Botanical Gardens camps, the Gulf Coast Conservancy Youth Education Nature Program and Mote's one-day camps. 

"We had people this year writing checks specifically for summer camps because of the amazing impact they have," said Dale. "We just want this to be an opportunity to spark an interest in these kids for ecology and taking care of our planet. So, we love to see when kids come back through us and apply for the scholarships every year."