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.