BOXERWOOD RISING: Meet Sarah Hollen, Boxerwood Board Member

Throughout our 25th year, we’ll be sharing stories of young people whose Boxerwood experiences shaped their passions and vocations. Have a young friend to recommend? Contact Catherine Epstein: catherine@boxerwood.org

Growing up in the small town of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, Sarah Hollen loved every opportunity she had to get out of the classroom and explore outdoors. “Getting the chance to hold little critters, touch the snakes, all of those things…a highlight was macroinvertebrate sampling,” she added, referring to the stream monitoring with boots and nets. “I always remember loving to do that.” 

Fast forward a decade. Attending Washington & Lee as an Environmental Studies & Economics double major, Sarah found herself leading that same stream activity as an intern for Boxerwood’s camps. In this new role, she was able to pinpoint what’s so powerful about this activity. “Not only is it just fun, but it has a purpose,” she said. “I think kids really appreciate that…once they see that it has a purpose, then hopefully, you know, Boxerwood’s mission is that they then feel a responsibility or a desire to take care of the stream. I think that can start when you’re really young, which I love.”

Sarah noticed this same sense of purpose in another camp activity that summer: lunch composting. After every meal, campers put their food waste into a bucket rather than throwing it in the trash. “I just loved that,” she said, noting that the daily activity demonstrated to children how they could be Earth stewards even during ordinary moments like lunch. Sarah especially appreciated that Boxerwood’s composting bins – organized and labeled at different stages of food decomposition – brought home the composting process and purpose for campers. “They see the ‘active’ bin, where they can see their actual food. And then they can see what’s going to happen in a few weeks, how it starts to decompose. When they look in the next bin, they can see how it becomes food for the worms, and then they can see the end of the process, when it’s ready to be spread into the garden,” she explained. “Boxerwood’s ability to show them the entire process is really cool. I think it makes it stick for kids.”

In both of these activities, Sarah recalls being struck by the educational style at Boxerwood. “I just remember being so impressed. The level of excellence was mind-blowing to me.” Sarah mostly worked with Program Director Elise Sheffield and Early Education Coordinator Jess Sullivan, and she immediately noticed “their belief that each kid deserves the very, very, very best education that they could provide. The ability to immerse themselves in the kids’ world and see things from their perspective without ever talking down or oversimplifying anything – that was really inspiring.”

As a W&L senior, Sarah built on those educational discoveries by serving as our work-study student. During the 21-22 school year, she helped Boxerwood educator Ginny Johnson launch a local chapter of Envirothon, a national afterschool program for teens, which Sarah had been part of back in Pennsylvania. She researched aspects of COREworks, Boxerwood’s homegrown carbon offset marketplace, and she also helped develop a partnership between W&L Athletics and Boxerwood to help student athlete leaders do green service activities with their teams. 

These and other experiences led Sarah to pursue an opportunity with Teach for America. Following her graduation, Sarah moved to rural Kentucky to teach high school math and coach soccer, track and field, and cross country. After completing her service, she returned to Lexington two years ago as the Assistant Coach for cross country and track and field at W&L. And once again, she’s nurturing her connections with Boxerwood, this time as a volunteer.

Now 26 years old, Sarah is the youngest member of the Boxerwood Board of Directors. Never having served on a Board previously, she said, “It’s been a really great experience, very eye-opening…To see the inner workings of a non-profit like Boxerwood is really cool and something that I’m definitely going to take with me.” 

Since her work-study days researching COREworks, Sarah has now served on two of its external community review panels. “That’s been a really cool experience,” Sarah explained. “It’s analogous to being on the Board. I’m getting to see behind the scenes of how these projects get verified and put on the Marketplace for COREworks which is really cool. The first time I did it, it was very new to me. I had no idea what to expect. Now I’m in my second verification process, and I feel like I have a better idea of what’s going on. It’s cool to be able to see COREworks still going strong.”

Reflecting on the many ways she’s connected with Boxerwood over the past five years, Sarah stated that Boxerwood has “given me something to aspire to in the level that I want to perform at professionally. When I was a classroom teacher, I would just try and channel my inner Elise and my inner Jess because I respect so much how they do what they do.” Through it all, Boxerwood has also been “a place where I can recharge, and then go back out into the world and see it with a new energy and a new sense of purpose, and with a lot of gratitude.” 

She noted how Boxerwood’s deep, place-based learning brings people closer to this particular piece of land while simultaneously expanding their perspective. “It’s a place where the world gets really small,” Sarah said, “but then the people at Boxerwood do a really good job of making it really big again. Making the world really big again.”