Monday, September 28, 2009

Time is flying by as summer turns into Fall summer as BBTO has been focused on helping the Obama Administration engage millions of people in service projects across the United States http://www.serve.gov/. It has been the busiest time for the program ever as we have been involved in two particular initiatives that are helping connect young people with nature.

In June we www.sierraclub.org/military worked with the Obama Adminsitration and partners including the National Military Family Association http://www.nmfa.org/ to pack 15,000 backpacks at Ft McNair in Washington DC to children attending Operation Purple Camps which gives kids whose parents are serving overseas in the military a free week of summer camp. It was an honor to meet the President and the First Lady and thier family but what the made experience so memorable was watching the President, members of Congress and our Executive Director Carl Pope pack bags in the heat and humidity of a DC summer dayto help put a smile on the faces of a children who are going through so much. In working with these special kids, I have learned so much. The responsibility that I have seen so many take on as they step into the role that thier parent who is deployed had is both inspiring and humbling. Working in this arena has also reinforced my belief in the power that an outdoor experience can have on a young person's life as the smile you see as the children engage in the multitude of outdoor activities offered ay an Operation Purple Camp is remarkable. The Sierra Club understands that a new generation of American heroes is entitled to splash in the water and just have fun outside. To watch the United We Serve event and see the First Lady do her luha dance look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKcEMm52h64and for an overview of the power of the program look at this NBC Nightly News piece which ran this week www.msnbc.msn.com/id/303269/#32178611

Here is a link to a great piece that Timothy Egan wrote about engaging the First Lady on raising the profile of our National Parks
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/

BBTO has also been busy along with the Children and Nature Network and the North Face building a network of Natural Leaders accross the country to work together to get young people outside. We had fourty young people from over twenty states come together to start a conversation on how we can build a diverse network that helps empower youth to be not the leaders of tommorow but the leaders of today. The Natural Leaders Summit took place at beautiful Marin Headlands in San Francisco. Watching young people from New York City interacting with folks from rural Washington on how we can work together to have common sense community solutions to connecting all children to the outdoors For more information go towww.childernandnature.org/movement/naturalleaders I have never seen momentum like this as people from all walks of life are working together to give every child that special place outdoors!

 

Monday, May 25, 2009

Early Angels and a New Gear for Government

 

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Natural Leaders
Los Angeles, CA

On April 4th in partnership with the Children and Nature Network http://www.childrenandnature.org/ , the Sierra Club will help launch a Natural Leaders Day, the effort is being organized by our Youth Volunteer Coordinator Juan Martinez. Over 300 youth from around the country will be hosting events to showcase that they are leaders in the movement to connect children with nature. These events will be taking place from Puerto Rico to Los Angeles. I think the fact that so many youth have stepped up and showed an engagement on this issue bodes well for the movement as the reality is that if we want young people to be connected to the outdoors, they have to not be future leaders but leaders now. I saw a great example of this recently when I attended the Get Outside Forum in Victoria, Canada http://www.childnature.ca/ where I witnessed over 40 youth from Canada play a prominent role in how the Conference was organized and run. They also had an opportunity to respond to every keynote and session which I found refreshing and inspiring, you can see my keynote and their response here www.childnature.ca/webinar . Engaging young people as leaders in the movement is going to be the key to its success in my opinion and watching what is happening in British Columbia and here with Natural Leaders Day gives me faith we are on the road to success.

Thier are some exciting things going on with Building Bridges to the Outdoors program right now as I am here in Los Angeles as our California Rep Tiffany Saleh has moved to the Los Angeles office from Sacramento. We think it is key that she is in LA where so much movement is happening around this issue. A great example of this is students from Crenshaw High School and Dorsey High School which are traditional gang rival high schools are coming together for an orientation on Monday to get ready for a trip to Yosemite National Park together in early April. Together is the key term as it shows the power nature can have as engaging young people in the outdoors. This has helped the Crenshaw Eco Club become the largest after school organization at Crenshaw and we hope that this joint trip will be the catalyst for the same thing happening at Dorsey High.

In mid-April we will be bringing young people from the Bronx Lab School in New York City to Puerto Rico to participate in an Alternative Spring Break with students from Puerto Rico. They will have the opportunity to see a turtle nesting migration and a chance for many of them to return to the land of thier heritage. We will be filming this and producing a DVD so we can showcase the impact this experience can have on young people's lives.

Remember that April is Children and Nature Awareness month and check out on the Children and Nature website www.childrenandnature.org President Obama's inspiring remarks on how getting outside affected his own view of the enviornment when he spoke to the Department of Interior.

 

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Green Stimulus

Jacksonville, FL

I am here in Jacksonville, Florida to give a keynote to the YMCA of America's annual conference www.ymca.net . They are a group that repersents the best of America as they have a variety of issues that they engage in from health, military family support and the issue of connecting children with nature. I am amazed at the grwoth of our issue when you see an organization like the YMCA with over a million members that is diverse and gives America's families and youth countless opportunities, embracing the value of connecting children with nature. Children and nature has become not an enviornmental or educational issue but rather a human issue.

The recent stimulus package passed by Congress will hopefully give our economy the boost it so desperetly needs. I have many friends who have lost thier jobs over the past few months and don't have any hope of finding one. I have a feeling that it is going to get worse before it gets better. How do we get our economy going is the miliion dollar question? Richard Louv just wrote an interesting piece on how nature can help spur economy and bring back pride and a service movement in our country www.childrenandnature.org/blog/ The piece really captures that out of every disaster the United States has faced we have risen up and become stronger, I just finished reading an outstanding book by Jonathan Alter, The Defining Movement: FDR's 100 Days it touched upon how in these moments of crisis we have to come together and find creative ways to engage each other in community based solutions that can help us not only find a sense of hope but create economic opportunities. One of FDR's biggest programs the Civilian Conservation Corps helped get a struggling generation work and a sense of service and pride in setting up conservation projects. I know the pride this program created from my own Pepere (Grandpa in french) as he still takes me to all of the State Parks in New Hampshire that he helped create through his work in the CCC. Is is a tough time for so many people across the United States but maybe nature and the connection we have with it can help us create green jobs and inspire an entire new gneration.

Pat Quinn the new Governor of Illinois continues to work towards connecting children with the outdoors. His new Department of Natural Resources Chief Marc Miller has stated that his top goals are:
• Increase outdoor opportunities of all kinds;
• Get more young people outside.

The Children and Nature Network and REI have come together to put together a wonderful tool to connect families to the outdoors. The Nature Family Tool Kit can give families countless ideas on how to have a fun and safe outdoor outing www.childrenandnature.org/pdfs/NCFF toolkit.pdf

Spring is coming-time to find that special place outdoors!

 

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Green Play to Green Pay

Washington DC

A new chapter has started in our nation's history as we have in President Obama a leader who has laid out the immense challenges we face in the toughest economic climate we have experienced since the great depression. The only way we will be able to make it through this period is by working together towards goals that enhance and better all of our communities. Our challenge at the Sierra Club is now moving beyond just connecting children with the outdoors but to also make sure that this experience leads them to learn about jobs and gain skills that can help them get a high paying green job. The definition of green jobs is hard to define as everyone has their own take, I feel that any job that can help engage a young person from putting in solar panels in California to working at REI in Seattle is a green job. Van Jones a leader in this movement is leading a progressive organization Green for All which has a great definition of Green Collar Jobs http://www.greenforall.org/?gfa_splash=1 Green for All has been a leader in pushing the Clean Energy Corps, which is a plan for a national service program which will connect AmeriCorps and other national service programs towards building a new generation of skilled green workers. The Sierra Club has endorsed the Clean Energy Corps as it is a way for us to begin engaging all communities on the stimulus we can benefit from in engaging our youth with skills in a green economy and a strong sense of service. You can download the Clean Energy Corps at this site.

I am in Washington DC attending the 2009 Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference with members of Team BBTO. We are committed in 2009 to finding partners and attracting thousands of new young people to the concept of Green Play to Green Pay. This will be a long road as there are so many challenges we face today but with spirit and determination and by working together we can make a new green economy that benefits our nation and our environment. Here is a link to the conference which is being lead by the Blue Green Alliance.

I never thought that we would get a boost from the Blago scandal in Illinois but the new Governor Pat Quinn pointed out in is first press conference that he had just finished reading Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. We hope to engage him in our work.

 

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

A Year to Remember

Seattle, WA

It has been quite a year to remember for the Sierra Club's Building Bridges to the Outdoors Program. We have had a complete staff transition but through all of this we have helped our partners get out over 20,000 underserved children outside accross the country. As happy as we are with our volume numbers the real value that I have observed is in some of the great young people who have had life changing experiences through the Building Bridges to the Outdoors Program. In New Mexico I saw Maya Quintana from the Zia Pueblo south of Santa Fe had never spent the night outdoors until she became involved in the Santa Fe Mountain Center's www.sf-mc.com outdoor programs. This experience helped Maya begin to sense her heritage and how important the outdoors was for her family. All the way accross the country at the Bronx Lab School in New York City we helped engage over ten young people in attending the joint Sierra Student Coalition and BBTO joint SPROG near San Juan, Puerto Rico. This was the first time any of the young people at the Bronx Lab School had an opportunity to visit Puerto Rico and learn about thier heritage. These experiences change lives and I am so proud that our program played a role in this.

We held three major events in Washington state, New Mexico and Chicago. These events have helped raise the profile of outdoor education and built important new alliances to showcase how connecting children with the outdoors can help children's health, their academic performence and give them leadership and build self-esteem to help all of our communities. The Crenshaw High School Eco Club in Los Angeles who has been a partner from 2002 is now the largest after-school program at Crenshaw with over 400 members. Building Bridges to the Outdoors has become a leader in the movement to connect children with the outdoors but 2009 is going to be a critical year in moving our issue forward.

With the election of President Barack Obama things in Washington are going to move at a faster pace then ever before. It is going to be critical to allign the issue of connecting children with the outdoors with service and creating new green jobs so young people in all of our communities have an opportunity to have a career in a field that not only provides them with a high quality of life but also helps our country become the leader in the fight against global warming.

I am so proud of all of the great work of our staff and volunteers have done in 2008 and also want to take a moment to remember former Sierra Club organizer Shannon Harps who tragically passed last New Years eve.

So many more children are getting outside then when we started five years ago and I am seeing more diverse partners engaged on this issue. That being said the time is now to work together to move this issue forward.

 

Sunday, November 30, 2008

A Changed World

Eugene, Oregon

What a world we have become. On November 4th, more Americans then ever came together and voted. Barack Obama is now the President-elect of the United States of America. Once again America has shown that we are hard to define and we have gone in a much different direction then anyone would have predicted. We have elected a man who outlined he wanted to bring change to America but I am struck by how his character and background is so uniquely American and I believe it will lead us to become a more intergrated part of the global village. What an exciting time to live and youth and millinialls help lead us on this new path. I spent time in the weeks before the election in far reaching places from Ashville, North Carolina to our Noarthern cousin in, Jasper Alberta. Everyone I spoke with was facinated by the election and the amount of people involved and engaged. I saw first hand a mother and a daughter in New Mexico connected by a common theme to perform an action in voting that they realize play such a critical role in their quality of life. It was humbling and inspiring at the same time but what a challenge awaits all of us.

Money is no longer growing on trees and we all know that we are entering a period away from hyper individualism and mass consumerism. Natural areas will be hurt as funding will be scarce. The local park I tell people to go together as families will be harder to protect. But it is somewhere that is free even if time becomes harder for most hard working Americans to find. We may finally get away from the mall for a while. We need a challenge to embolden us to showcase our strength and come together and make us all proud again. A new commitment has to materilize to put aside labels and finding new ways to create jobs in a new green economy which can put us back on a path to economic stability and cultural branding. If they wear Michael Jordan jerseys and think Obama is the coolest thing ever our youth leading a green economic revolution would be a stunning turnaround in American desitiny.

I point to Eugene, Oregon which was the final stop in my rollorcoaster off the last six weeks as a community that wants to be a leader in the movement to create change. In Eugene I spoke to a mixture of community leaders ranging from the City Manager to Director of the local YMCA and Forest Service Ranger originally from North Carolina. It was a diverse mixture of groups that spoke about solution to transportaion, zoning, school standards. Chris Ordingser, the Executive Director of Friends of Buford Park and Mount Pigsah said it best when he said "let's come down from our silos and go outside together and take our community back". They are arranging to put down some tent poles with certain organizations and groups and invite everyone in to work together to begin to address the challenges they face in getting every child outside to experience the "rain" of Eugene. At my night speech at the Shed a converted downtown church where my mother's favorite singer Joan Baez was singing the next night I saw a community have a frank and sometimes uncomfortable discussion on the barriers on this issue. They are significant snapshots at our daily life. Liability and fear can lead to hard truths being examined. But the overriding messege was hope. Hope that Eugene has a plan to figure it out through working together and making sure that every child can play in the rain.

Every community as its own way. The change we now have is because each community wants to be empowered as they were in the last election by a network that surpassed anything created before it. It was based on the positive power of change. We can come together and solve these problems but I realize we have to do it together as simple as that sounds. I think the Sierra Club and our dedication to making sure we can engage communities to empower themselves to be leaders in green energy and help create green jobs will blaze a new path to peace and prosperity.