2020 Ready by 21 National Meeting

The outdoors is one of the most plentiful, versatile, recuperative, and transformative settings that youth, families, and systems have access to. How often, in our efforts to design equitable learning environments, do we limit our thinking to only what’s indoors? How frequently do we underestimate the privileges naturally available to some families and neighborhoods? How quickly do we write off opportunities to experience the outdoors as nice but not necessary? Or think that we’ve done enough if we’ve given an inner city youth two weeks at camp? Should the outdoors be a non-negotiable part of our equity agenda?

Richard Louv has the passion, wisdom, and research we need to wrestle with those great questions. He is a journalist and author of ten books, including Our Wild Calling: How Connecting With Animals Can Transform Our Lives - And Save Theirs and Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. His books helped launch an international movement to connect children, families, and communities to nature. He is co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Children & Nature Network, an organization helping build that movement.