Programs to Highlight from Chicago Recreation Forum

The following are some of the exemplary programs that were presented at the Recreation Forum in Chicago, Illinois, on March 22, 2007. Please feel free to comment on how these programs could be furthered or replicated.

In 2001 Lt. Governor Pat Quinn walked 167 miles across Illinois as part of a campaign for better health care for everyone. In 2005, faced with the growing epidemic of obesity in the state and in the nation, Illinois created "Walk Across Illinois", a challenge to everyone in the state to walk at least 167 miles over the course of a year. Progress can be tracked for free on www.walkacrossillinois.org, which shows you where you are on a virtual map and teaches facts about the history of Illinois. The program has attracted more than 8,000 people, logging more than 700,000 miles in total. The model has been adopted by various schools and parks across the state.
Daniel Persky, Walk Across Illinois

Ours is a curriculum-based environmental education program that introduces 4-6 graders to the great outdoors and conservation stewardship. We focus on education, exploration, restoration. It's not just a curriculum; it’s a partnership. By allowing the kids to come back for three years in a row, the kids can truly see the impact of their restoration efforts on the land. They learn that this is their space, and they will want to return in the future.
Cheryl McGarry, Mighty Acorns

America's Outdoors Center is a five federal agency partnership that brings the agencies together in areas where their missions cross boundaries: recreation, conservation, education. We sell interagency passes. The agencies work together to work on common goal of getting kids excited about the outdoors and we run our programs together.
Jean Clausen, USFS, America’s Outdoors Center

Active Living By Design looks at how the physical and social environments impact the ability of people to be physically active. The "Healthy Eating by Design" Program targeted the first graders at one school. We wanted the program to be garden-related. We brought the program into eight students’ homes and gave them the resources to cultivate a garden to promote the eating of fresh fruits and vegetables. During the school year, we took them to farms to see where their food comes from. We have to reconnect our children to the land, we can do these by connecting them through the schools and in their homes.

Public schools don’t institutionalize recess anymore. We are organizing teachers to promote extended school days so recess can be reintroduced in the public school system to get our kids outside.

Rails to Trails Project- We’re turning unused or underutilized train lines into a trail system. It’s an opportunity to have something in between the waterfronts and the forest preserves.

We’re also proposing a program called "Sunday Parkways." It’s modeled after a program in Bogota which for more than 30 years has closed over 70 miles of streets on Sundays and holidays so people can walk, ride their bikes, push their strollers, etc. We want to do this in Logan Square to connect 20 neighborhoods in Chicago each week in order to help build new communities.
Lucy Gomez, Active Living By Design

We're geared towards teaching inner city kids how to fish, always with conservation in mind. It is volunteer-led by avid anglers. Last year a new program granted children the chance to earn scholarship awards. We represent the importance of intergenerational sharing in outdoor recreation.
Richard Wilborn, Fishin’ Buddies

Partnership for the National Trails System- These trails are conceived under law as long-term public-private partnerships. Each year we contribute 700,000 hours of volunteer labor to sustain the trails, which are really works in progress. We involve everyone, including children, as a part of the trails system. "Trail to Every Classroom" brings trails into the classroom and then brings kids out to the trails. Our newest national historic trail (Selma to Montgomery) just opened a new visitor center, and went to the youth to involve them in the process of making their video, asked the students what the Civil Rights Movement means to them.
Gary Werner, Partnership for the National Trails System

We wanted to get youth more involved and committed to stewardship activities, and to develop material to being these efforts together and introduce kids to the concept of ongoing stewardship. We developed three graded field book (similar to passports) to spark interest and encourage hands-on participation in natural areas, especially for underserved populations. They can also be used to document service hours.
Kathy Marie Garvis, Chicago Wilderness Grassroots Youth Outreach Task Force

Quality Deer Management Association- Two great programs for youth: 1) Mentored Youth Hunting Program- long-term commitment between a mentor and a youth to teach them woodsmanship skills and about being good stewards of natural resources. 2) Living with White-Tailed Deer Educational Program- gives middle and high school students a situation with an over-abundant deer herd in a urban park. It allows them to have a mock town hall debate. They each have different community roles and a budget to follow. Students learn everyone is impacted wildlife in urban settings.
Kip Adams, Quality Deer Management Association

We bring our program into the schools. We show youth the connectivity between urban environments and nature, particularly in regards to the water supply. We have kids fish in the Chicago Park District lagoons. Fishing builds self-esteem and brings out leadership qualities in unlikely students. However, we have a problem with the Chicago public school system; some won’t allow students to go near water.
Brenda McKinney, State of Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Chicago Urban Fishing Program

Lake County Forest Preserves- We offer a continuum of experiences to connect people to the outdoors. It’s important to have entry-level experiences, you shouldn’t just send people out into the woods. We offer a wide variety of family programming, day trips to region resources, and a variety of guided and self-guided activities. We also offer logs and medallions for people to commemorate their outdoor experiences. Science First reaches out to urban youth and connects science-oriented youth to one another, allows them to blossom with each other.
Lynn Hepler, Lake County Forest Preserves

Friends works with the After School Matters Program to fund Earth Teams. We pay teens as part of job training to take care of the parks and learn about nature. While this might not seem like a way to encourage stewardship, it is a way to reach into neighborhoods where volunteering as a priority falls below getting kids of the streets and into after school jobs.
Rebecca Blazer, Friends of the Parks

I've included a service learning component in my course where students apply concepts in Richard Louv’s book to a project in their communities, such as creating opportunities for nature-based free play in urban areas.
Sydney Sklar, Assistant Professor at the University of St. Francis

The Backyard Nature Center will not be a location, it will be a broker that promotes and facilitates the bond between the nature sites in the New Trier Township and those who want to directly experience nature. The Backyard Nature Center will work with schools, curriculum specialists, teachers, and community groups to promote these experiences because no one can do it alone.
Daniel Kielson, Visions Unlimited

There are creative ways to share resources. Believe it or not, schools have some money. Some schools even have foundations. We’re looking for people like you to come in and connect the programs. We have a great EcoBuddy program that links high schoolers and second graders because there is common curriculum (although at different conceptual levels) in their programs.
Nancy Brankis, District 103

Families have learned about nature from television and books, not from direct experience. This needs to change. Since we opened our Children’s Garden, attendance at the Arboretum is up 60%, membership is up 50%, and many are family memberships. A large part of our success has been in attracting adults. Create a place where adults feel comfortable bringing their kids and where they know there will be things for their children to do when they get there. Another part of our success is because we are a hybrid: we structure unstructured free play. We all know about the problem that kids don’t get outside, but we need to develop measurable ways to track how children are benefitting from their experiences outdoors.
Katherine Johnson, The Morton Arboretum

I started out cleaning the parks with 25 kids fifteen years ago, and I have been cleaning every year since on Earth Day. Now we have over 500 people come every year. Wherever there are block clubs, we try to get neighborhoods involved in their own parks. We need more programs that involve youth with the parks, not only in the Humboldt area but in other areas around the city as well.
Maggie Martinez, Humboldt Park

I wrote a book called "The Nature of Chicago" that can help guide you through urban ecosystems. We started our organization because young people everywhere, regardless of their location or choice of career, need to be caretakers of the environment. We reached out to high school students and teachers because most environmental programs were geared towards the elementary level. We want to make people aware that high school kids are capable of participating in restoration efforts.
Isabel Abrams, author and co-founder of Caretakers of the Environment International/USA

Girls Scouts promotes hiking and camping with an emphasis on taking care of the land. We give girls the skills to have safe outdoor experiences, the knowledge to be prepared, and the attitude to protect the natural environment. We need to achieve an attitude of global living to make outdoor recreation a positive experience for generations to come. We are training courses for teens and adults to promote our principles and teach hands-on skills. We have also designed before and after measurable needs assessment.
Lis Christensson, Director of Education for Girl Scouts of Trailways Council, Master Educator with Leave No Trace

We provide many outdoor recreation opportunities for people and connect them to the land simply by taking care of it. We also run several programs with the schools, teacher workshops, and junior ranger programs on the National Lakeshore, including a new one that involves families. I’m also a volunteer for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources in their Education Center. They take families that have a lot of experience doing outdoor recreation activities and pair them with families that don’t. Mentor families commit to getting together with their mentee family several times throughout the year.
Wendy Smith, Education Coordinator for the Great Lakes Research Education Center

We serve 35,000 students and teachers each year. We are an expansion site for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Earth Partnership for Schools, which trains teachers to restore lands around their own schools. Kids can see their progress every day. Currently we are looking for youth-centered organizations interested in educating youth about climate change by installing climate change monitoring gardens and implementing a related summer internship program for students ages 12 and up. This is a national initiative that involves 13 botanic gardens across the country.
Jennifer Schwarz, Education Manager of Chicago Botanic Garden

The Forest Service has four branches, all active in the Chicago partnership. We have a research proposal in that tries to deal with the contribution of our various programs to kids’ decision making as they graduate from high school and go on to college. International programs are joining with Midewin: Mexico is interested in creating a "fly way" for monarch butterflies up through Chicago, so we’re looking at an initiative that will promote the creation of backyard monarch gardens. In Midewin, we work to restore tallgrass ecosystems through partnerships and volunteerism, and the Forest Service has been instrumental in this effort.
Logan Lee, Prairie Supervisor at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie