All About Project GO
Project GO participants working in their garden plot.
Welcome to ProjectGetOutdoors.org
Project GO is a 501c3 non-profit organization. The mission of Project GO is to link youth and caring adult mentors to exploration, play and reflection in nature near local communities so youth will grow to be healthy, comfortable outdoors, and knowledgeable and passionate about their land and community throughout their lives. We serve ALL youth while limiting participation barriers for under-advantaged youth.
Our staff, board members, volunteers and partners represent a variety of agencies that share the following beliefs:
1. In order for youth to be healthy they must play and explore outdoors.
2. Minnesotans will care more about protecting our natural resources if they have childhood experiences that allow them to bond with nature.
3. All kids must have access to the outdoors during the hours out of school.
4. All youth should be introduced to caring adult mentors who are passionate about the outdoors in order to provide safe outdoor experiences as well as guidance and inspiration during those experiences.
5. All Minnesota youth and families must be introduced to our public parks and trails and the lifelong recreation opportunities available at these sites.
Working in SE Minnesota, Project Get Outdoors helps communities in the region to implement after school programs that get kids outdoors and in nature. We have designed a toolkit that will be provided free-of-charge to all Minnesota communities. Our goal is to have at least one Project GO coordinator stationed at state parks in each of the five regions of Minnesota. These coordinators will assist communities with toolkit implementation and guide them through designing their own unique GO programs that introduce children in grades K-8 to nature exploration and outdoor recreation at public greenspaces within 30 miles of the communities.
We are working to implement GO programs into every school district of the SE Minnesota blufflands region by the end of 2010. We hope to serve a minimum of 10,000 children by the end of 2012 and to have programs operating in every county of Minnesota by 2015.
For more information about the Project GO toolkit, please click on the “toolkit” tab above.
Why Do We Need Project GO?
With the 2005 release of Richard Louv’s book “Last Child in the Woods; Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”, an international movement coined as the “Leave No Child Inside” movement, sprang to life. “Last Child in the Woods” has inspired and motivated millions of people around the world to work to reconnect children and families with nature. The research Louv brought forth in the book is evidence that without experiencing nature, children cannot develop into healthy, caring human beings.
Reasons why we need programs like Project Get Outdoors include the following:
1. Close, usable green space is disappearing therefore most kids do not have access to the outdoors where they can experience wild play.
2. Stranger-Danger and Eco-phobia (fear of nature) keep parents from allowing their children to experience the outdoors.
3. Families today are overscheduled with activities and parents do not make it a priority to get kids outdoors to play.
4. Human health is degrading because of our lack of exposure to nature and the outdoors. Due to inactivity, millions of children in the USA suffer from childhood obesity, diabetes and depression.
5. The average child in the USA spends about 6 hours per day in front of the television, computer and video games. Research suggests these habits may have serious effects on our children including ADHD.
6. Because of their lack of exposure to nature, most kids do not know common plants and animals found in their own backyards.
7. Recent studies suggest that environmental awareness is something learned at an early age as children are exposed to the natural world. In Minnesota today, less than 50% of adults can identify the major environmental problems affecting our state’s natural resources.
It is true that many kids cannot and should not be left alone outdoors. That is why Project GO provides caring adult mentors who are passionate about the outdoors. As the famous biologist Rachel Carson wrote in The Sense of Wonder, “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. If a child is to keep alive this inborn sense of wonder…he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”
Research shows that early play memories, especially in outdoor settings, hold a special status for many people. Researchers have been struck by “the tenacity and clarity of these play memories even after half a century into adulthood” and suggest that the “commonality of such memory evidences a widely shared bond of human experience.”
A Project GO intern with Winona State University has called our program “recreation education”. By getting kids outdoors and allowing them to “play” and explore the local natural resources of their communities and regions through recreation activities, youth have a better chance of developing into healthy adults and they naturally develop an awareness of and appreciation for our land and the soil, water, plants and animals that are all part of the landscape.
Caring volunteers make Project GO programs successful!
What Are Some Examples of Project GO Activities?
Examples of Project GO activities can include most any outdoor recreation activity; hiking, fishing, kayaking, birding, camping, swimming, biking, gardening, rock climbing, etc. Activities from Project WET, Project WILD, Project Learning Tree and other environmental education curriculum can easily be altered to fit with the criteria for Project GO programs. The key factor is that the child’s experience trying and doing must be the main focus of the activity.
Typical environmental education and outdoor recreation programs involve much instruction and discussion before, during and after activities. With Project GO activities, kids must learn by doing, not by being told.
Project GO activities must also allow the child to make decisions during the experience. For example, if fishing is the activity then the kids get to chose their bait and decide where they want to cast and from what part of the shoreline they want to cast. If they would rather wade in the water or skip rocks on the water’s surface, as long as those activities do not threaten their safety, they should be viewed as learning experiences as well. These kinds of choices allow a child to learn by experience and to form a closer bond with the natural world around them.
It’s about getting kids outdoors and connected to the natural world. It’s about letting kids use their five senses to discover and experience nature. After all as David Sobel, director of teacher certification programs at Antioch New England Graduate School, states in his book Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, “what’s important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it and feel comfortable in it, before being asked to heal its wounds…If we want children to flourish, to really feel empowered, let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it.”
