Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Southeast hosted a "Bring Your Kids to Work Day" event at its headquarters building at Naval Air Station (NAS) Jacksonville, June 11.

More than one hundred children attended the event, with ages ranging from preschool through high school. After a quick check-in process they each received goodie bag's filled with educational tools to help them succeed in the day's activities and were put into their different teams.

Capt. Steve Hamer, NAVFAC Southeast commanding officer, kicked off the event, greeting the children and sharing with them what NAVFAC Southeast does to support Sailors.

"Today you all will get a chance to see some of the things your moms and dads do as well as learn about other aspects of what our command does," said Hamer. "Many people think all we do is build airplane hangars, but you might be interested to know that we also work to develop new water sources for villages in Africa or that we help with Coral Reef conservation in the Pacific Ocean, we also develop solar power projects, but in order to do all of that construction we need the help of a lot of different people, including your mom or dad."

During the event the children were introduced to many different things the NAVFAC team does around the world. They learned how to create contracts, how to manage money, how to protect the environment and our ocean as well as learning how to read a map, compass and GPS while on a treasure hunt.

Each conference room was given a theme and filled with hands-on activities, videos actual tools from the field and of course, snacks.

NAVFAC's environmental team was the biggest hit with the kids, learning about endangered species, playing with artifacts, animal bones, building whale hats and learning how the environmental team works.

"I loved playing with the artifacts and learning how they find them, the diver game was a lot of fun," said Eleanor Smith, a nine-year who was a part of the Bulldog team. "We had to wear a diver mask and pretend to swim down and find an artifact and its location and then swim back and report it to our map maker."

The event gave kids the opportunity to not only learn about what their parents do every day but to also work as a team to finish a project, which is one of the benchmarks that makes the NAVFAC Southeast team so successful.

"This event is great not only for the kids but also for us as facilitators. We get to talk about our job and why we enjoy it so much," said Timothy Money, a forester in NAVFAC Southeast's Environmental department. "I enjoy showing the kids what I do and teaching them why it's important to protect our environment."

Kids were not the only ones having fun during the event; some parents were able to share in the hands-on activities with their kids. Commander Phillip Lavallee, who was escorting his five-year old daughter Sierra around, talked about how much fun he was having and how great the event was.

"This event was awesome, watching the kids get engaged and work together, plus having my daughter see some of the things that I do in my job was great," Lavallee said. "I loved getting the tape measure out and measuring the walls with my daughter and other kids, it really was a fun day."

After a fun filled morning of projects, learning and working together, children and their parents gathered outside for a group photo. Many of the kids and parents expressed their appreciation for the hard work that the NAVFC staff put into making this a wonderful day and how much they looked forward to next year's event.

For more news from Naval Facilities Engineering Command, visit www.navy.mil/.