If you live in Boulder County, a reverence for nature seems intuitive. All you have to do is turn your face to the west where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains beckon.
Turns out, it’s more complicated than that. Limited family finances, parental work hours or simply a lack of tradition are barriers to nature for many of our community’s youth.
Thorne Nature Experience, a Boulder based environmental education center founded in 1954, is leading an effort to reduce barriers to accessing nature by coordinating and funding a 27 organization collective impact project in Lafayette. The Nature Kids project starts early with kids and also gets families deeply involved. Thorne Executive Director Keith Desrosiers has a ready-made description to encompass the project’s reach.
“It’s pre-K to high school, back yard, back country, family-integrated, environmental education and outdoor education programming.”
The phrase is a mouthful, because the project is many-faceted, said Desrosiers.
What does that look like?
Marycruz Pineda’s family initially became involved through her daughter, Leidy, when she was in the fourth grade at Alicia Sanchez International Elementary School in Lafayette.
It started out with Leidy, now 16, going to a yearly camp, but now the whole family – Pineda and her husband and their kids David, 11, Bryant, 8, and Diego, 2 – participates.
“We were at the family camp at Cal-Wood, my own children, a lot of neighborhood people we know,” Pineda said. “We were finding a lot of common ground.”
Her family learned a lot.
“They gave us a lot of instruction on how to camp, where we can camp, where we shouldn’t camp, where we can have a fire,” she said. “We learned mountain biking, how to cook our food over the fire, … how to shoot with a bow and arrow, also about different plants and trees in the woods.”
Carlos Lerma, Nature Kids community engagement manager, said the project starts with young kids experiencing nature near where they live and moving farther away as they get older.
“We believe that having kids experience nature closer to home is more relatable to them, especially when they’re younger,” he says. “They get to see how nature is a part of everyday life. As they get older, you can start introducing them to more complex subjects and the ideas that relate to the environment, nature and science.”
That can include trips to the Rocky Mountains where rafting can prompt lessons on how water is used in Colorado or the effects of climate change. Eventually high schoolers can get internships to work with younger children, Lerma said.
Marycruz Pineda said involvement in Nature Kids has meant a great deal to her family.
“It has been very rewarding. What I really liked is it has given us a better quality of life,” she said. “As the kids are getting older, it has provided not just volunteer opportunities, but they are also exploring work opportunities. They are able to get insights into jobs and careers in nature.”
