Thursday, December 07, 2006

The Leave No Child Inside Movement

San Francisco, CA

As 2006 comes to an end the Building Bridges to the Outdoors Project is moving forward faster then I ever expected. Through our targeted grantmaking efforts this year we have reached over 10,000 children and given them an outdoor experience. These experiences will hopefully create a new generation of diverse environmental stewards. Besides our main priority of getting underserved youth outside we have built a diverse group of partners ranging from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago to the New Mexico Community Foundation to help facilitate sustainable funding mechanisms in selected states to give more underserved children an opportunity to get connect with nature. The Sierra Club has also been the lead in getting state mandated studies that provide evidence that outdoor education is an effective way to improve science test scores. The 2005 California Department of Education Study that the Sierra Club financially supported and helped push through the California Assembly is now cited as evidence of outdoor education's positive effects
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-21-outdoor-youth_x.htm

Building Bridges to the Outdoors will be expanding in 2007 to Louisiana, Michigan and Texas with hopes of giving more children an opportunity to find their special place in nature. This issue is growing and as USA Today described last month this is the 'Leave No Child Inside Movement'
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-21-no-child-left-inside_x.htm

Cheers-Martin