Through the co-design process facilitated by UMSL’s Community Innovation and Action Center, local teens were encouraged to brainstorm ideas for youth programming at the upcoming WildCare Park. (Illustrations by Marty Baragiola)

When Akshaya Boopathi’s mom told her about the opportunity to work on a project with the Saint Louis Zoo, she was immediately in. A lifelong animal-lover, the 13-year-old imagined she might be able to help decide what animals to bring to the zoo and jumped at the chance.

That wasn’t exactly what Boopathi, an eighth grader at Southwest Middle School, ended up doing over the course of three months earlier this year, but she’s still walking away from the experience feeling energized and excited.

Boopathi teamed up with two dozen other middle school and high school students from across the St. Louis region to develop ideas for youth educational programming they’d like to see at Saint Louis Zoo WildCare Park, the zoo’s new world-class safari park and conservation center slated to open on 425 acres in north St. Louis County in 2027.

Through a unique co-design process facilitated by the Community Innovation and Action Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, the group of 25 students, ranging in ages from 13 to 18, worked together to brainstorm and workshop ideas. Over just four sessions between April and June, they developed three distinct possible youth programs to offer at the park: Digital Habitats, Nature Race and STEM Animal Tracks.

“I was very impressed with the speed in which they were able to come up with three distinct, polished, well-thought- out ideas that anybody at any age group would be interested in,” says Rachel Goldmeier, outreach coordinator at CIAC. “They came together, worked as a group and did a magnificent job – each team.”

Within the next 10 years, WildCare Park is expected to generate over $660 million in economic activity across the St. Louis region. In order to more deeply connect the park to surrounding communities, zoo officials decided to not just create a youth program, but to give community members a say in what the program might look like.

“We understand the need to make sure that their voices are heard,” says Jaclyn C. Johnson, the zoo’s assistant director of education. “We don’t want to do cookie-cutter programming, taking what we’ve already done at the main campus and then just applying it at WildCare Park. Knowing that all communities are different, we want to build upon the things that they really want and desire and not just what we think that they want to be involved in.”

To deliver on that goal, the zoo tapped CIAC to help create a co-design process to source ideas from students from across St. Louis. A collaborative approach, co-design is a way to ensure that all voices are heard when designing different products or services by actively involving the people who will use them.

Community engagement is a major focus of CIAC, which seeks to develop knowledge, connections and tools to advance equity across the St. Louis region. The organization was a natural partner to facilitate the co-design process, which was also supported by faculty and staff from the University of Missouri Extension Community Development and Youth Engagement team, including Community Development Specialist Dwayne T. James, 4-H Youth Development Specialist Melissa Scheer and 4-H Youth Program Associate Drachen Koester.

“One thing that we really try to do at CIAC is center community voice and priorities and focus on equity,” says Sara Mohamed, CIAC’s equity and engagement lead. “We have a lot of projects in which we are engaging either directly with community members or we’re engaging with partners that work with community. This project is kind of a mishmash of those two, because we are engaging directly with community, but we’re also engaging with our partners who do that direct work with community members. It’s something that we really value and is central to our mission.”

There is excitement building about each of the programs to come out of the co-design process. An on-site class offered over eight sessions during the summer, the Digital Habitats program would offer an immersive learning experience in which students could learn about animal habitats both virtually and physically. The program would combine hands- on experiences with WildCare Park staff – think exploring biofacts such as skulls, antlers and pelts or shadowing zookeepers as they feed animals and clean their habitats – with virtual reality experiences that would allow teens to explore habitats they can’t see in person at WildCare Park.

“A lot of the program involves shadowing because we want them to be able to see how the zoo care workers work and then also learn about why these animals are endangered and how you can help them,” says Angela Mahianyu, a rising ninth grader at Westminster Christian Academy who worked on the Digital Habitats team.

Inspired by The Amazing Race, the Nature Race program would feature a competitive race and overnight stay in which teens would research animals and participate in hands-on activities such as a scavenger hunt, building bird feeders and more. In doing so, they’d learn about native wildlife, conservation work at WildCare Park and ways to help protect the environment.

As a member of the Nature Race team, Boopathi drew on both her own love of nature and her experience at sixth grade camp to help come up with fun activities that would keep kids engaged. She enjoyed getting to meet students from across St. Louis through the program, which she thinks could have a tangible impact on conservation efforts.

“I think it’s important because many animals are going extinct, and many people are polluting and littering outside, which can hurt the animals,” she says. “For generations to come, I think people should be able to see all these animals, like elephants – I heard they’re going extinct soon, and there’s not many of them left. There are so many other animals that we haven’t seen yet – like out in nature – so I think it’s great that the zoo can bring in more animals so more people can learn about the environment and how we should really take care of it. Nature’s just beautiful.”