guest blog by Katherine Garcia and Jackie Ostfeld, originally posted on the Sierra Club blog Photo by iStock/Oleksandr Filon If you look for directions from Washington, D.C. to Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park on Google Maps, it will chart a route for your car down to the minute. If you try to find that same route [...]
Category: Blogs
Interior Announces $150 Million for Increasing Park Access in Urban Areas – So What Does That Mean for Youth and Families?
Today, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced $150 million in funding for the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program, as part of the Biden-Harris Administration's newly-released America the Beautiful initiative. Since 2014, ORLP (a program of the Land and Water Conservation Fund) funding has enabled urban communities to create new outdoor recreation spaces, reinvigorate existing parks, [...]
Watch: Rep. Katie Porter and daughter Betsy talk Every Kid Outdoors!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1388237608136945672 We love this great video from Congresswoman Katie Porter, who shares with her rising fourth grader, Betsy, that they're going on a vacation to a surprise destination: Zion National Park! Thanks to the Every Kid Outdoors (EKO) program, all fourth graders - including Betsy - and their families get FREE entry to any national [...]
Act Now to Support Funding for Every Kid Outdoors!
An audio recording will give you instructions before you're patched through to your member of Congress. Since, 2015, the Every Kid Outdoors (EKO) program has provided fourth graders with a pass so they and their families can gain free entry to federal public land and water sites. Now, this program needs funding to ensure it [...]
Fatima’s Great Outdoors
In Case You Missed It: Watch the Recording of Fatima's Great Outdoors Storytime Live Event By: Jackie Ostfeld, OAK Co-Chair and Founder and Jayni Rasmussen, OAK Senior Campaign Representative Note: Book cover courtesy of Penguin Kids and screenshot from livestream with author Ambreen Tariq. Photo originally posted on Sierra Magazine's blog on 4/8/21. Last week, Penguin [...]
It’s Great to Be a 4th Grader
A perspective on exploring national parks with the Every Kid Outdoors (EKO) pass as a military family. By Andrew and Hannah Pike As long-time Northern Virginia (NoVA) residents, our family is fortunate to be located near a myriad of landmarks and sources of natural beauty. A 30-minute weekend drive gets us to the National Mall [...]
RELEASE: After Pressure, Interior Extends Every Kid Outdoors Pass
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Wednesday, October 28, 2020 Contact: Ian Brickey (314) 238-6766 or ian.brickey@sierraclub.org After Pressure, Interior Extends Every Kid Outdoors PassOutside Groups Had Asked for Extension Since August Expiration WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, October 28, the Department of the Interior announced plans to extend the 2019-2020 Every Kid Outdoors pass into 2021. The move comes [...]
Helping More People Benefit from Positive Experiences Outdoors
This blog was originally published on the Rethink Outside website, and produced in partnership with the Rethink Outside campaign. Learn more. Recently appointed Vice President for Education and Chief Equity Officer for the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) Autumn Saxton-Ross, Ph.D., didn’t experience America’s national parks until she was an adult. She went to [...]
Every Kid Outdoors: Lily’s Story
by Jayni Rasmussen, Senior Campaign Representative for the Outdoors Alliance for Kids & Youth at Sierra Club. (Originally published on the American Heart Association's Healthy for Good Blog; cross-posted with permission) With the coronavirus disrupting daily life and increasing isolation, many people are turning to the outdoors for recreation. The increased interest in outdoor recreation [...]
Making Sure Every Child Receives the Benefits of Time Outdoors
This blog was produced in partnership with the Rethink Outside campaign. Learn more. Ten years before the COVID-19 crisis and the nationwide uprisings for racial justice, Sierra Club, YMCA of the USA, Children & Nature Network, REI and others set out to form a coalition and address an urgent crisis among America’s children and youth: social disconnection and an obesity epidemic caused by far too [...]
