Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Leave No Child Inside Forum

Los Angeles, CA

On May 16th, Building Bridges to the Outdoors brought together a diverse cross section of professionals at the Leave No Child Inside Forum at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles to discuss strategies to tackle nature-deficist disorder in our communities. The panelists at the Forum included Sierra Club Executive Director, Carl Pope, Richard Louv author of Last Child in the Woods, California State Senator Alex Padilla, Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona, California State Parks Director Ruth Coleman, REI CEO Sally Jewell and Bill Vanderberg our lead volunteer and Dean of Students at Crenshaw High School. All of the panelists made great points ranging from Sheriff Carona discussing how outdoor experiences act as a diversion from joining gangs. Sen Padilla pointed out that outdoor experinces give young people a sense of place as well as promote healthy and active lifestyles. Carl Pope, our Executive Director made a pointed out how outdoor experiences for young people are not an issue but should be a right that no child should be denied. We will have the proceedings from the Forum up on our website by the end of the month and we are partnering with the Chilren and Nature Network on making sure that the participants in the Forum can interact on line at www.cnaturenet.org and come up with community based solutions to solving nature-defict disorder. We hope to replicate the Leave No Child Inside Forum accross the country.

Other exciting news regarding the Leave No Child Inside Movement, the US House of Repersentatives Subcommittiee on Natural Resources held hearings last week on the issue of children being disconnected with nature. You can watch them at www.cspan.org It looks like their may be legislative movement on a national level on this issue. We also had a wonderful celebration last week in Seattle for our legislators here in Washington who worked so hard to pass the 'Leave No Child Inside Act' . Richard Louv who was in in town for a speech presented an award to all of our champions in front of 500 folks. All of the hard work paid off as thousands of Washington kids will get outdoors.

Summer is here so get outside and enjoy!