Martin LeBlanc
Previous Entries:
Early Angels and a New Gear for Government
Seattle...
Natural Leaders
Los Angeles, CA
On April 4th in p...
Green Stimulus
Jacksonville, FL
I am here in Jac...
Green Play to Green Pay
Washington DC
A new chap...
A Year to Remember
Seattle, WA
It has been quite...
A Changed World
Eugene, Oregon
What a world we h...
Dunes ’08 with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago
B...
It's the Outdoors, Stupid!
Santa Fe, New Mexico
...
It all about Partners Stupid!
Santa Fe, New Me...
A Night to Remember
Denver, Colorado
There are f...
XML Site Feed:
Click here for URL.
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!
<< Building Bridges to the Outdoors Main