10 Best Examples of

Connecting People with

Nature

Colleen Wearn

EDUC 302

● Quality of the experience

-Depth of connection

-Provides perspective and meaning

-Improves mindset, attitude, approach to life

● Quantity of people reached

-Overall number

-Reaches people at a critical point in life, or who

wouldn’t access nature otherwise

● Overall metric: being on quality-quantity

efficient frontier (to borrow from economics)

-Offers maximum quality or quantity or excellent combo

Quality

Quantity

Criteria

1 (ordered roughly from high quantity to high quality)

Inner-City

Parkse.g. Central Park, NYC

2

Trail

networksfor hiking, walking,

biking, etc.

3

Indoor

plants and

greenery

4

Farmer’s

Markets

5

National

Parks

6

Outdoor

SchoolsEducation programs that give

children the chance to study

our environment and learn in

the outdoors

My favorite example: http://w3.mesd.k12.or.us/os/Outdoo

rSchool/Welcome.html

7

Summer Camps

8

Birdwatching

groups and other avenues to connecting

with animals

9

Backyard

gardens

10

NOLS (National Outdoor

Leadership School)

Month-long wilderness expeditions

for students of all ageshttp://www.nols.edu/

(Outward Bound is another similar

example)

11 (because I counted wrong initially :)

The Mountain School of Milton AcademySemester program that provides high school students the opportunity to live

and work on an organic farm in Vermont https://www.mountainschool.org/