News & Updates

Leave No Trace for Your Camp!

Guest - March 2, 2017

Albuquerque, NM: In 2016, Leave No Trace created a curriculum using several diverse and holistic approaches in order to maximize the program's impact on youth: experiential education, independent practice, skill mastery, interactive resources, K-8 core standard tools, and organizational accreditation. 

We developed this curriculum with camps and youth programs in mind because believe Leave No Trace is best taught in the context of the outdoors, where open spaces and natural areas serve as the setting to teach kids how to care for nature. Camps offer kids the best opportunity to spend extended periods of time in the outdoors where learning, repetition and practice are foundational. Summer camp experiences, where kids develop new skills and where inquiry questions are posed and answered by students, is a perfect place for their affinity for nature to grow and where their stewardship for our outdoor places develops. 

The Leave No Trace for Every Kid curriculum sees every moment of a kid’s time in nature as an opportunity to explore what it means to have fun outside while taking care of it. 

During the summer of 2016, 20 of the Center’s camp partners were strategically chosen to take part in the Leave No Trace for Every Kid Curriculum Pilot Program. The goal of the pilot program was to evaluate how the curriculum’s components integrate and function within the camps’ program models.

What came out of the Center's Pilot is an exciting new step toward making sure camps that want to raise affinity of nature and develop stewards of our natural world have the best resources available: Leave No Trace Accreditation. 

The curriculum materials and new accreditation program will be available March 2017. Until then, if you have questions about the Pilot program or how to get your camp or youth program involved in Leave No Trace, contact Andrew Leary at [email protected]

 

Enjoy Your World. Leave No Trace. 

Leave No Trace's Donielle Stevens and Aaron Hussmann are part of the 2017 Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainer Program that provides free, mobile education to communities across the country. Proud partners of this program include Subaru of America, REI, Fjallraven, Eno, Deuter, Thule, Smartwool, and Taxa Outdoors. 

 

Let’s protect and enjoy our natural world together

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