The Park and Recreation Organization for Students will collaborate with the Leo’s Club of Barboursville to create a Braille trail in the Barboursville Park. Braille trails help the visually impaired enjoy outdoor activities, such as hiking, with ropes to guide them, easier to read informational, interpretive signs and some audio components.

PROS members participate in a variety of community service projects, and the Braille trail will be one of the first ones of the semester. Madison Birchfield, vice president of the organization, said they are also planning an Earth Day plant sale to raise money for their recreation trips.

“We work, starting around this time, to plant things in our greenhouse space, and we raise the plants from seeds,” Birchfield, senior natural resources and recreation management major, said. “We have succulents too, and we raise the plants and pot them and take care of them. Then, we put them up here for sale and accept donations as part of the Earth Day celebration.”

PROS also have clean ups in which members will travel to local parks, like Beech Fork State Park, to clean and beautify the outdoor areas and lakes.

Birchfield said the recreation trips are an important part of the group as well.

“We go on a lot of adventure recreation trips,” Birchfield said. “We do hiking, we do backpacking, we go to national parks, state parks, we do zip lining, white water rafting once a year, and we take trips wherever anybody wants to go. The white water rafting trips are always fun, because we all camp, and then we get to sit in our hammocks around the campfire and listen to music and play the guitar the whole night.”

While PROS was created by natural resource and recreation management majors, Birchfield said the club encourages everyone of all majors to join.

“It’s open for all majors and all interests,” Birchfield said. “The things we do aren’t necessarily related to our curriculum or anything, it’s just similar interests. We’re actively looking for new members all the time. We have a lot of fundraising opportunities and we want to take a lot of really cool trips going to national parks out of state. That’s what we do the Earth Day plant sale for to raise money for those types of trips.”

PROS members meet at 3:30 p.m. every Thursday in the Morrow Library Commons.

Amanda Larch can be contacted at [email protected].