About Us

How did NREO get started?

On April 14, 2005, the Silver Valley Mining Association (SVMA) sponsored an educational seminar at the Brooks Hotel in Wallace, which featured the directors of two natural resources educations program, one in Vancouver, British Columbia and the other located in Phoenix, Arizona. Maureen Lipkavich came to Wallace to talk about the Mineral Resources Education Program of British Columbia (www.bcminerals.ca), and Larry McBiles spoke to the gathering about the Arizona Foundation for Resource Education (www.afre.org). Both speakers gave excellent, informative presentations about their respective programs, and were very well received by seminar attendees. They demonstrated that even though their programs work in different fashions, both are dedicated to and successful in assisting teachers and school districts with bringing the teaching of natural resources topics back into their area schools. And both Maureen and Larry indicated to SVMA members at the seminar that they will always make themselves available for future consultation and support.

The April 14th seminar was attended by a very fine representative audience of regional mining companies, local K-12 school administrators and teachers. All participants exhibited a great deal of interest and enthusiasm for developing a "teacher driven" organization that would be able to assist teachers with developing and teaching natural resources programs. Immediately following the seminar, JoAnn Corley volunteered and was accepted, by the SVMA to spearhead the development of the type of program all the seminar participants wanted to see brought to life here in the Silver Valley.

Since the formation of NREO, a series of organizational meetings were held to select board members, teacher advisors, community advisors, and to build a framework for the operation of the teacher educational classes. NREO decided to loosely follow the Arizona program discussed above, and to adopt the "Out Of The Rock" curriculum, supported by the National Energy Foundation and used in both the Arizona program and the British Columbia program.

After a considerable amount of work and discussion, the days of August 9-11, 2005 were chosen as the time for our first accredited teacher classes. Twenty three area teachers participated in the class. The program included in-class instruction, in-class labs and field trips to two local mining operations, the Bunker Hill Mine, and the Galena mine, for underground mine observation. Upon the completion of the NREO program, teachers received 1 CLE from Northwest Nazarene University.

NREO, an Idaho, non-profit corporation is entirely dependent on donations from businesses and individuals for its existence. Hopefully you will agree that this is a program whose time has come, and that it is worthy of community support. In addition, as the program grows, it will have a need for volunteers and new, fresh ideas. Please come out and support the program.