Our Grants

2023 Trustee Grants

Current Year Grant Summary
In 2023, the National Recreation Foundation awarded 37 Trustee Grants totaling $650,000.

Adaptive Climbing Group

Adaptive Climbing Group

Access to both indoor/outdoor climbing is limited to people in the disabled community due to physical barriers, cost (higher than the typical climbing cost to ensure ability-appropriate equipment), and training required to ensure a safe environment. Adaptive Climbing Group (ACG) creates affordable and accessible climbing experiences and development opportunities for people with disabilities. It also provides the necessary resources to promote engagement and to empower persons of all ages and abilities to explore the sport of climbing. ACG is increasing youth climber participation in outdoor climbing by reducing financial barriers to entry and expanding access and trip frequency. ACG will organize several outdoor climbing trips on rock and ice for climbers, which will take place at local areas accessible to people of all abilities.

Aspen Institute

Aspen Institute Forum For Community Solutions

The Aspen Institute’s Fresh Tracks program is a leadership training program that connects young people to the outdoors. It strives to ensure that diverse youth from across the country can come together for intercultural exchange, to acknowledge and heal from trauma, and to have dialogue about these persistent inequities while building power together.

In 2023, Fresh Tracks will host its Cultura Exchange, a cross cultural exchange for young leaders from Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation and the Atlanta, Georgia area. The Cultura Exchange will create shared experiences and community to focus on leadership development, civic engagement, well-being and healing through outdoor movement, and cultural competency for social change.

Bike Works

Bike Works Seattle

Southeast Seattle is an area historically overlooked for transportation funding, safe streets improvements, healthcare infrastructure, and public-school investment. The 98118 zip code is one of the most racially and culturally diverse in the country. Many neighbors rely on bikes for free or low-cost mobility, yet the main thoroughfare is the site of the highest numbers of traffic-related deaths in the region. These factors make mobility justice and access to affordable outdoor recreation a prescient issue to the community.

Bike Works’ mission is to promote the bicycle as a vehicle for change to empower youth and build resilient communities. Its overarching goals are to diversify the cycling industry and promote the bicycle as a vehicle for population and environmental health, community-building, and equity. NRF funding supports Bike Works’ cycling access, education, and leadership development pipeline programs. The programs spark life-long passion for cycling and the outdoors; provide a supportive environment where young people explore their identities and communities through cycling and group dialogue; offer paid leadership opportunities where participants gain vocational and soft skills; and engage young people in peer-to-peer mentorship in the form of bike mechanics instruction and ride leadership.

Catalina Island Conservancy

Catalina Island Conservancy

Most Avalon School youth spend their lives in the one square mile town of Avalon, California, without access to nature recreation or science enrichment. Catalina Island Conservancy addresses this through its Island Explorers & Garden Explorers programs, which connect Avalon youth to the natural world during the school year. Catalina Island Conservancy is expanding its Island Explorers K-5 program to a K-8 model, thereby serving additional students and offering a broader program scope. The K-5 curricula provides students the opportunity to venture out of Avalon with a grade-level field excursion each year, special bilingual curriculum and learning materials. Expanding the program to serve middle school students provides a seamless K-8 learning opportunity and address a pivotal developmental age.

Free-to-use Garden Explorer Packs, containing field guides and exploration tools, strengthen local and visiting youths’ connection to the Garden’s rare and endangered plants. Nearly 50,000 people visit the Island’s only Botanic Garden each year.

CRYP

Cheyenne River Youth Project

The Cheyenne River Youth Project (CRYP) is a Native, woman-led, nonprofit serving Lakota youth ages 4-18 on the Cheyenne River Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota. The goals of CRYP’s youth-centered programming are to build leadership skills; build strong life skills; strengthen the connection between Lakota youth and their culture, art, and traditions; increase the number of kids committed to wellness, exercise, and healthy eating more traditional foods; teach youth to garden to improve food security; and cultivate and train the next generation of culture bearers and community leaders.

NRF funding supports the expansion of CRYP's recreational programming to more youth. CRYP offers a 50-hour Native Wellness internship for teens, basketball, volleyball, walking and biking clubs, color runs, and daily exercise opportunities that are fun and encourage regular participation. CRYP also introduces youth to traditional sports including háŋpapȟečuŋpi, or hand games, which is played with 16 sticks representing one of the spirits in the Lakota creation story and traditionally crafted from elk, buffalo, or deer bones.

Chicago Training Center

Chicago Training Center

Chicago has a number of public high schools and middle schools with less than 400 students that are funded well below the numbers for which they were designed. Resultingly, their students have fewer resources directed toward Out-of-School Time. Chicago Training Center (CTC) has identified high schools and middle schools, within three miles of its boathouse, to partner with to bring its rowing program to their students. A Chicago Training Center partnership provides many resources to enhance the physical, emotional, nutritional, and educational aspects of the students’ lives through competitive rowing.

CTC’s rowing curriculum is designed to give youth a toolkit for learning anything new, not just sports. The youth involved will benefit by being more flexible and thus more successful in their approach to learning a new subject, as well as more physically fit and nutritionally aware. CTC provides all students (grades 6-10) an introduction to the sport at school; hosts Splash Days at the Boathouse for students to have their first interaction with the boathouse; provides spots in CTC's Summer Camp; and offers students access to its year-round rowing program. During the most critical three-hour period after school, CTC provides student-athletes with physical training both on and off the water, in a safe, nurturing environment free of charge.

Chicago Voyagers

Chicago Voyagers

Chicago Voyagers serves youth experiencing barriers to success such as poverty, trauma, special education needs, and racial discrimination. Many of its youth live in greater Chicagoland’s high-need communities such as North Chicago and North Lawndale. Chicago Voyagers' outdoor experiential programming uses a multi-faceted, neuroscience-based approach to prevent or diminish the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Offering access to nourishing environments and stimulating activities during this time allows adolescents to develop long-term healthy behaviors that contribute to their future success. Chicago Voyagers works with students ranging in ages from 12-18 and partners with more than 20 area schools and community organizations to offer experiential outdoor adventure programming, including hiking and backpacking, overnight camping, canoeing, and more. Programs are offered year-round and participation in the program is provided at no cost to the teens.

City Kids

City Kids Wilderness Project

City Kids Wilderness Project’s solution to the teen mental health crisis isn’t just to get kids outdoors. Instead, it believes that the complexity of this crisis requires an intervention that is equally layered and creative. Its response is to combine outdoor education with the frameworks of positive youth development and social and emotional learning. City Kids Wilderness Project’s mission is to build resiliency, broaden horizons, and ensure the skills for success for participants, through intensive, long-term youth development programming, using natural and wilderness settings to encourage personal growth. 

City Kids’ programs and spaces foster the skills required to navigate the opportunities and challenges youth will face as they grow. This looks like creating rituals around healthy communication and safe spaces for youth from under-resourced communities to be themselves; carving out time to participate in activities that bring youth joy; removing devices to encourage looking up and experiencing natural and wild spaces; and providing a community of trusted and accepting peers and adult mentors.

Compass Rose Education

Compass Rose Education is committed to serving Texas communities in need by building schools that reflect the strengths of the community and their hopes for their children.  Located 30 miles east of Austin, Bastrop has limited school options, most of which are consistently under-performing. The alternative school choices are private schools, serving only those who can afford them. Compass Rose Education opened Compass Rose Harvest as an agriculture science school that partners with local resources to bring 21st century ag-science learning to its students. Starting in kindergarten, students investigate their world, collaborate with peers to solve problems, and work at the intersection of science, technology, and agriculture with the same intensity they apply to reading, writing, and math.

Compass Rose Harvest plans to construct raised beds around the perimeter of the school. Students will plant, nourish, and harvest flowers, herbs, and vegetables. These beds will allow the students to learn about construction, plant cycles, and healthy foods, while also giving them the opportunity to share the products of their labor with their families. 

Courage Ranch

Courage Ranch

The prevalence of mental illness does not discriminate between rural and urban residents. Texas’ rural communities of Atascosa, Karnes, and Wilson counties are underserved and lack mental health services, especially for children. Courage Ranch, a trauma-focused, equine-assisted psychotherapy facility in Floresville, addresses this rural need by providing a safe space for children to find hope, belonging, and connection to build a foundation of lifelong well-being.

Courage Ranch’s unique and relatable therapy sessions are unlike traditional therapy settings, as sessions are conducted outside, allowing clients to move, become congruent with nature, and experience the natural rhythms the environment offers. Children visiting Courage Ranch face issues of grief, abuse, depression, suicidal ideation, isolation, fear, and anxiety; however, through its program, they find meaning in their trauma and can regulate responses to future trauma.

Detroit Hives

Detroit Hives

Detroit Hives believes a healthy future for bees reflects a healthy future for humanity. The health of those in inner-cities, specifically people of color, is often the last to be considered – and it’s Detroit Hives’ mission to change this. Detroit Hives is a honeybee education and conservation initiative that engages urban communities in its mission by creating cultural experiences that are both educational and relatable. By transforming vacant lots into urban bee farms, Detroit Hives revitalizes neighborhoods, builds community, cultivates knowledge within the city, and begins conversations about health and healing among young people.

NRF funding supports the expansion of Detroit Hive‘s 'Bee The Change’ educational program, which educates children and families on the native plant species of their natural environment and the pollinators species/types that need these plants to cross-pollinate. Detroit Hives' work also revitalizes vacant lots by removing blight and any/all hazardous materials that potentially present a risk to families. By doing this, Detroit Hives is creating an outdoor learning experience for children and families by reimagining the ‘classroom experience,’ and by creating a safe and inclusive multi-use green space, which also showcases native wildflowers.

Detroit Horse Power

Detroit Horse Power

Horseback riding is a form of recreation generally unavailable to youth from low-income, urban, and minority communities. Detroit Horse Power (DHP) has taken a leading role in making this programming available to urban, youth of color in under-resourced Detroit communities. NRF funding supports DHP’s summer horseback riding camps for youth and its summer camp staff, student transportation, meals, and supplies. DHP’s programming is informed by research on equine-assisted learning and precedents from urban riding programs that already serve similar populations in other U.S. cities. These examples and its own track record of demonstrated impact document the transferable skill-building possible through riding and caring for horses: Perseverance, Empathy, Responsible risk-taking, Confidence, and Self-control. Students learn how to ride and care for a horse, interact with guest speakers from equine professions, and reflect on their experiences.

While DHP currently operates by bringing youth from the city to partner horse barns outside Detroit, it is on a three-year path to open a new urban equestrian destination on a 14-acre vacant land site in Detroit. This will make its program accessible in students’ communities, while strengthening the fabric of the neighborhoods in which they live.

ESCC

Eastern Sierra Conservation Corps

Eastern Sierra Conservation Corps (ESCC) builds a more inclusive outdoor community by offering professional development opportunities and wilderness access experiences to youth and young adults who continue to be underrepresented in outdoor leadership. It provides stable housing, living wage employment, access to nutritious meals, access to outdoor recreation, and mental health support services. ESCC’s members are immersed in wilderness settings, challenged physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally as they complete tasks with their group and undergo marked transformations. Youth that experience mental health support have the opportunity for a greater integration of experience that leads to continued positive engagement with the outdoors and an increased likelihood of participating in future conservation and stewardship efforts.

Excite All Stars

Excite All Stars

The state of Louisiana (“Sportsman’s Paradise”) is a place rich in seafood, swamps, wildlife, fishing, and many outdoor activities. Unfortunately, many of the youth in the inner city of New Orleans do not have the opportunity to experience this side of Louisiana. They often experience the more unpleasant side of environmental issues and injustices which puts them and their family members at risk for health inequities and exposure to toxic waste. Excite All Stars empowers youth to be environmental advocates for their communities by including environmental education in its programming. It teaches independence and self-awareness through outdoor adventures, demonstrating partnership and trust through outdoor activities, and developing outdoor leaders through innovative programing and trips to public lands.

Excite All Stars offers 16 weeks of outdoor/adventure programming, including a week-long overnight environmental-focused camping experience for youth from underserved Greater New Orleans communities. In addition to the overnight camp experience, Excite All Stars also provides year-round opportunities for canoeing, hiking, high ropes course and rowing.

Gardeneers

Gardeneers

Due to racial inequities and centuries of systemic racism, many BIPOC communities in Chicago face significant health issues. Since its founding in 2014, Gardeneers has partnered with schools in under-resourced communities to directly address issues related to food apartheid. Gardeneers seeks to connect communities to self-sustaining resources that will help create a more equitable food system. The skills and knowledge gained in the program paves the way for healthier futures for all Chicagoans.

Gardeneers partners with a network of elementary through high schools, primarily on the West and South sides of Chicago, in low-income, under-resourced communities of color that face barriers to fresh, healthy food access. Gardeneers provides weekly programming for students to grow and maintain vibrant learning gardens that promote healthy eating, a love of nature, and a connection to community. Its school farm and garden programs contribute positively to the larger food system by building students' awareness, knowledge, and skills to address food inequality and become leaders who care for themselves, their communities, and their environment. Each site hosts farm stands, workshops and other opportunities for families and community members to engage in the gardens and access fresh produce. This collective work results in the production and donation of 6,000 pounds of fresh produce to local communities through weekly farm stands, Community Resource Days, and workshops at the garden and farm sites.

Get Outdoors Leadville!

Get Outdoors Leadville!

Despite living in a region renowned for its outdoor assets, many youth and families in Lake County, Colorado, face significant barriers to accessing the physical and psychological health benefits of outdoor experiences. Roughly 70% of Lake County students are Latinx, but they are significantly underrepresented in outdoor recreation. Get Outdoors Leadville! (GOL!) was established with the aim of identifying and addressing barriers to outdoor access for Lake County youth and adults. It offers nature-based field work in public schools, out of school time enrichment, community programs for individuals and families, and a donation-based gear library.

GOL! envisions a world where people of all identities, backgrounds, and abilities experience safety, wellness, and a sense of belonging in the natural world. GOL! offers a Rockies Rock Adventure Camp, a 4-week summer camp for youth ages 5-18 from Lake County’s diverse community. Besides providing critical out of school time childcare for local families, Rockies Rock also offers youth an immersive nature-based experience. GOL! provides program transportation, partners with local schools to provide free meals and snacks to participants, and offers sliding scale tuition, payment plans, and tuition waivers to ensure equitable access. 

GOTRT

Girls on the Run Triangle

Girls on the Run of the Triangle (GOTR) is a physical activity-based, positive youth development program for girls in 3rd-8th grades. Its mission is to create a world full of joyful, healthy, and confident girls acting on their values and opportunities. GOTR's programming is designed to develop and enhance girls’ social, psychological, and physical competencies to successfully navigate life experiences.

Glacier Peak Institute

Glacier Peak Institute

The Darrington, Washington, community has been told for years that outdoor recreation is the economic way forward. However, there are no local outdoor recreational employment opportunities in town. Glacier Peak Institute empowers youth to build resilient and sustainable rural communities and healthy ecosystems across the Glacier Peak region of Western Washington through innovative, action-based education programs integrating Science, Technology, recreation, Engineering, art, Mathematics, and skill-building (STrEaMs).

Glacier Peak Institute’s “Rivers as Bridges” program works to produce more resilient futures for youth (participants) and a handful of young adults (leaders) by providing healthy outlets through paddle sports in local surroundings. For millennia, people of the Sauk and Stilly rivers were renowned for boating skills. This is no longer true. Even with the Wild and Scenic Sauk River running through town, youth are more likely to die by the age of 30 than to have rafted the local rivers. In addition to serving school-aged youth, Glacier Peak Institute will recruit alumni from its programs and existing Latinx, BIPOC, Homeless and Tribal partner communities to place marginalized persons in positions of leadership. Glacier Peak will provide raft guide training, a space for participants to see their own community members in positions of leadership, and knowledge of local ecosystems. 

Grand Canyon Youth

Grand Canyon Youth

In this highly connected world, youth are struggling with high rates of obesity, anxiety, and depression because of economic and social inequities. This is especially true for Indigenous youth. The rivers of the Southwest have been deeply important for Indigenous people since time immemorial. Through colonization, access to the river has been limited to mostly white, wealthy tourists. Grand Canyon Youth (GCY) envisions a diverse and equitable world where all youth are empowered to live with purpose while discovering and caring for self, community, and the natural world.

GCY provides access to river expeditions for Indigenous youth. GCY expeditions are designed to encourage participation, reflection, and teamwork where youth have the opportunity to try something new, work through challenges and simply play. Student health is supported through physical activity and healthy eating. Project-based learning and critical thinking are crucial to cognitive development and are ways for youth to connect and navigate through their outdoor experiences. Participating youth work alongside scientists, elders, educators, and guides to create connections and future stewards of the rivers and canyons of the Southwest. Additionally, GCY strives to recruit, train, and support Indigenous youth to explore becoming guides and mentors.

ITE

Ironwood Tree Experience

Latinx, Hispanic, and Indigenous youth need to feel included, joyful, and worthy while regularly and safely accessing and using public lands forests, parks, and historic trails. Ironwood Tree Experience (ITE) works to create healthy and resilient communities and make it possible for young people to engage with the natural world and be stewards of the environment. It’s Youth Action Community program directly meets this need through various outdoor recreation activities such as camping, hiking, wildlife identification and observation, and picnicking with youth peers, family members, and adult mentors.

Kids in Focus

Kids in Focus

Kids in Focus (KIF) uses photography, field trips to exciting locations, and the guidance of caring mentors to restore hope, resiliency, and self-esteem in kids who have suffered adversities, enabling them to better cope with trauma and become happier, more productive individuals. KIF’s True North Photography Day Camps provide kids an opportunity to get out of their neighborhoods (and often stressful lives) for a full day of exciting outdoor adventures. They learn basic photography skills and participate in healthy outdoor physical activities that connect them to nature and a new world of possibilities. During the camps, 2-3 kids are paired with an adult mentor. Together they explore the outdoors and learn to see the world in new ways, building confidence, trust, and hope.

Learning Outside

All children need opportunities to connect with the natural world; to be physically active in nature; learn-by-doing; make discoveries; collaborate with others; engage in imaginative play; grow their physical, social, and emotional skills, and their ability to make positive choices for themselves and for those around them; to engage in risk-assessment; to learn how to positively resolve conflicts with others; and to feel a sense of belonging. Learning Outside (LO) provides these opportunities for all children enrolled in its programs.

NRF funding supports LO’s 2023 summer camps where campers work in LO’s Learning Garden and Learning Barn, participate in Drumming Circles, Group Field Games, and Waterworks, and take part in art and other project-based activities.

Living Classrooms

Living Classrooms Foundation

Using unique learning environments, Living Classrooms Foundation provides access to more equitable education, workforce, and health/wellness opportunities that enable individuals to achieve their aspirations and build safer, stronger, and healthier communities. Living Classrooms’ WILD program takes youth on a 9-day outdoor adventure trip to Torrey, Utah, home to the red rock canyons of Capitol Reef National Park. WILD challenges youth (ages 14-24) who have not previously had access to this kind of experience to take healthy risks and try new outdoor activities, including hiking, camping, horseback riding, and stargazing. Participants learn about conservation of these important outdoor spaces in the west while being immersed in the physical and mental health benefits that come from spending time in nature. Through visits to the Capitol Reef Field Station and volunteer opportunities alongside Park Rangers, participants are introduced to career and higher education exploration in an array of sciences, natural resources management, and historical/cultural resources. This opportunity takes participants outside of their comfort zone, allows them to connect to nature, and uses positive youth development practices to help them learn and master healthy life skills and increase their resiliency.

Lucky to Ride

Lucky to Ride

Bike riding offers lifelong opportunities to engage in a fun, low-cost, healthy, and pro-social activity. Unfortunately, youth from low-income families rarely have the financial resources needed to purchase their own bicycle. Giving youth a bike is not sufficient; youth need STEM-based learning skills, training, and practice in how to ride safely and how to maintain their “new” bike. Owning and riding a bike helps youth learn independence and to get themselves where they want to go, while also offering opportunities for regular exercise. Lucky to Ride offers low-cost cycling programs for youth throughout the Denver Metro area. Rides take youth on mountain bike trips. Learn-to-Earn and Youth@Work provides paid internships and teach kids basic bike repair, riding skills, job readiness skills, and the opportunity to earn a bike of their own, all while following a STEM based curriculum.

Miles4Mentors

Miles4Mentors

Miles4Mentors (M4M) is committed to making sports and activities accessible to children who may not otherwise have the opportunity to participate. The intended side effects of this mission are to develop stronger, healthier, and more confident and caring children and parents, as well as strengthening the community in Willmar, Minnesota (a culturally diverse community in west central Minnesota).

M4M's Fun Run Series is free and open to all children ages 4 to 11 years. The series consists of 5 runs, all centered around community events, with one additional invitational run for children identified by the school district. M4M's fun run series is intended to get kids outside to be active and to shares key elements of healthy living, including tips on making better food choices to reduce obesity. The organization purchases footwear, so kids can start off on the right foot and feel confident to start running and be physically active.

Momentum Bike Clubs

Momentum Bike Clubs

Adolescence is the critical period between childhood and adulthood—a time when youth build attitudes, competencies, values, and social skills that will carry them forward to a successful adulthood. For youth from marginalized, under-resourced communities, however, these skills are often seemingly unattainable without intervention. Momentum Bike Clubs (MBC) transforms the lives of students through a comprehensive youth development program using cycling as a platform to foster and sustain mentoring relationships in Greenville County, South Carolina. MBC is working to build strong mentoring relationships with students so that they have the support and opportunities to set and achieve goals and to experience economic and social mobility.

Nature for All

Nature for All

In 2019, LA County Metropolitan Transportation's (Metro) Transit to Parks Strategic Plan presented a systematic vision for increasing access to parks and open space countywide. At the time of publication, only five existing transit lines served any of Los Angeles’ mountain open space destinations. Only 22% of the county population lives within one-half mile of bus stops or routes that service beach parks, and it takes an hour or more for 60% of residents to get to the mountains. Expanding access is a key priority for the region as LA County has a wealth of open space and recreational assets. Nature for All programming aims to diversify and expand access to nature and get underserved communities outdoors to enjoy the benefits provided by public lands and open, green spaces.

The All Aboard for Nature program provides youth and young adults trips the opportunity to take trip to locations such as the San Gabriel Mountains, Los Angeles County Parks, Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, and Will Rogers State Beach. The All Aboard for Nature program improves access and connectivity to a variety of open spaces by reaching out exclusively to high-need and very-high-need communities and by providing residents with free travel to natural areas within 1 to 1.5 hours of their homes.

Openlands

Openlands

By understanding more about birds, including how they survive and contribute to the urban environment, students forge a critical connection with nature as it exists in their own communities. Birds in my Neighborhood (BIMN) is a volunteer-driven, environmental education program offered free-of-charge to schools in Northeastern Illinois. Managed by Openlands with assistance from the Chicago Audubon Society and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) at Volo Bog, the BIMN program teaches 2nd-5th graders about birds and their habitats, guiding them toward an appreciation of nature. Through its in-class lessons, field trips, and programming, it aims to create greater access to these uncommon natural areas, putting a new generation in touch with landscape near home while fostering health, well-being, and pro-environmental attitudes and habits.

NRF funding supports the program’s expansion in Lake County and helps deliver Birds in my Neighborhood programming to hundreds of Lake County youth. The volunteer driven BIMN curriculum connects youth to nature through the song, plumage, colors, and antics of birds. Craning their necks, scanning leaves of neighborhood street trees for flight, or walking boardwalks through marshes at places like Volo Bog, children learn to socialize, exercise, and nurture their mental health through the natural world.

Radical Monarchs

Radical Monarchs

California-based Radical Monarchs is a social justice education organization with a deep environmental justice commitment. The organization works to address the exploitation and neglect that girls and nonbinary youth of color experience. Based off first-hand experience and observations, Radical Monarchs believes that dismantling systemic oppression and structural violence must be rooted in being able to name and shape what the girls and nonbinary youth of color need to thrive. To this end, the Radical Monarchs implements strengths-based, self-empowerment education strategies operationalized through its core Badge curriculum and Alumni program. Radical Monarch’s equips youth/Monarchs across Radical Troops nationwide annually with the knowledge, skills, and stakeholder networks to empower them to protect and materialize their rights to dignified healthcare, housing, and income, as well as opportunities to thrive and experience the fullness of their humanity through outdoor recreation.

SHAPE Community Center

SHAPE Community Center

Across Texas, youth are facing their mortality on a daily basis, and the overwhelming stress they experience has a negative impact on their physical and emotional health. SHAPE Community Center helps provide youth with the motivation to help themselves, their families and community. The acronym S.H.A.P.E. stands for Self Help for African (All) People through Education. SHAPE’s Youth Enrichment Program provides activities that increase academic performance, provide alternatives to online activity, decrease risky behavior, provide cultural safety, promote family involvement, and form community partnerships. SHAPE also aims to increase the amount of time children spend in physical activity and outside, to help improve their overall physical and mental health. 

Solar Youth

Solar Youth

Too often, youth have an abundance of unsupervised time, which may result in finding a sense of value and identity through negative behaviors, beginning at an early age. Solar Youth targets two of New Haven, Connecticut’s neighborhoods with high percentages of children living in poverty, where few resources promoting positive youth development exist, despite the tremendous need. Solar Youth is a consistent presence in its target neighborhoods. It has built trust as a provider of high-quality youth development programs that promote physical and emotional health. Families rely on Solar Youth to help build community, connect youth to the environment, and foster the social cohesion needed.

Solar Youth’s Steward Program serves children, ages 5-12, as well as teens interns who help lead program. By engaging in its programs, especially over time, youth gain important skills and developmental assets needed for overall physical and mental health, which help set them up for long-term success. More than 50% of Solar Youth programming takes place outdoors—a blend of recreation, physical activity, connection to nature and connection to community. In 2023, Solar Youth is increasing exploration and adventure trips that get youth out of their neighborhoods to enjoy new and exciting experiences.

Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones' mission is to increase independence, improve lives and promote inclusion for children and adults with disabilities. Its Summer Day Camp serves young people (ages 5-22) with intellectual and developmental disabilities from around the Greater Cincinnati area at its Given Road location in Hamilton County. Disabilities include autism/sensory needs, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, seizure disorders, and others. This 5-day a week accessible summer camp strives to make a host of recreational activities accessible to its campers, understanding that everyone deserves to experience hobbies, explore nature, and find community connection with friends regardless of normative ability.

Urban Word

Urban Word

Urban World champions, centers, and elevates young, marginalized voices as leaders at the intersection of the arts and civic engagement. Through the transformative power of the written and spoken word, Urban Word provides young, creative voices, the tools, training, and platforms to rewrite the narratives that shape their lives and their communities.

Urban Word’s new Movement of Body & Pen workshop series combines creative writing and mindfulness practices to provide the tools for self-expression and wellness for youth. This workshop series seeks to support young people with finding healthy ways to heal their mind, body, and soul through creative writing expression, yoga, movement, meditative practices, and nature walks to provide tools to support their mental wellness. Movement of Body & Pen hosts a series of workshops throughout the year, leading up to a 4-Week Summer Session. Each workshop addresses a different theme and opens with a wellness activity (yoga, meditation, etc.) with a creative writing activity to have the participants generate thoughts that arise from the theme of class. By the end of the program, participants will have a basic understanding of how to continue a wellness practice using what they learned as tools for self-awareness, healing, and stress-management.

WAMoA

Walter Anderson Museum of Art

The Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, is just blocks away from the Mississippi Sound. It is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of artist-philosopher Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965), whose paintings, drawings, murals, block prints, sculptures, and writings of coastal plants, animals, landscapes, and people have placed him among the most compelling and singular artists of the 20th century. The Museum is guided by Anderson's belief that "in order to realize the beauty of humanity, we must realize our relation to nature."

The Museum’s Waveland Public Art Enterprise leverages artmaking and the environment to meet the need for increased outdoor education and recreation in public schools, as well as to address the challenges of brain drain and STEM workforce development. Participants explore and investigate surrounding environments to source inspiration for a culminating sculpture. Over the course of the 12-month program, students from nearby Bay High School work with professional artists to design, fabricate, and install a large-scale steel sculpture in Waveland on the same site designated as ground zero for Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 landfall. Students will find inspiration through excursions into coastal environments, conduct community-engaged design work to solicit public input, collaborate with professional artists to engineer the steel structure, and hone skills of welding and fabrication to bring the artwork to life. The sculpture’s location, selected in partnership with the City of Waveland, will serve as an anchor for the expansion of public green space and park amenities, a landmark to direct visitors to the city’s recreational infrastructure, and a vehicle for STEM skill acquisition and student discovery that supports homegrown workforce development and overall student health in Coastal Mississippi.

We've Got Friends

We’ve Got Friends

Due to the social challenges teens with special needs experience, they frequently have feelings of disconnection and isolation, which impacts their social and emotional health. Montclair, New Jersey-based We’ve Got Friends’ (WGF) Social Network for Teens with Special Needs provides social groups where teens with special needs can connect with peers in their local community, developing their social and communication skills. Mastering these skills is key to increased self-confidence and community engagement. The next step in achieving these goals is to generalize these skills to a broader peer group. Providing developmentally appropriate recreation activities with peers on a regional level will allow the teens to generalize their skills, develop additional friendship connections beyond their local social group, as well as expand their knowledge of recreational activities available to them.

Wilderness Youth Project

Wilderness Youth Project

  • Website: wyp.org
  • Grant amount: $30,000

Many kids face barriers to accessing the outdoors and, on average, youth only spend seven minutes a day outdoors. According to the THRIVE initiative, “two of three children enter school in Santa Barbara County with one or more risk factors that may impact lifelong achievement.” Wilderness Youth Project (WYP) addresses these issues and works to grow smarter, healthier, happier community members by connecting youth from all backgrounds to nature. Its nature connection and mentoring programs run throughout the school year and summer to ensure that youth find improved quality of life, health, and social well-being through meaningful experiences outdoors.

YMGAGD

YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit

Only 13% of youth in Southeast Michigan are active for one hour a day, and barely half of all children participate in sports even once a year. The YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit is working to change those statistics and remove barriers youth face to access sports and free play in various low and non-resourced communities in Detroit, Wayne County, and pockets of under-resourced communities in Macomb and Oakland county. NRF funding supports expansion of the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit’s SportPort program. As part of the national Project Play Agenda, SportPort was developed in partnership with the Community Foundation, The Ralph C Wilson Jr. Foundation, and a host of local community partners across southeast Michigan as a component of Project Play Southeast Michigan. The YMCA operates as the mobile partner of Project Play Southeast Michigan-SportPort. The mobile program provides a 90-120 minute experience for youth 5-13 years of age that allows them to play different sports with the proper equipment and guidance in their own communities, while encouraging free play and exploration with sports. These opportunities are further extended through partnerships with stationary partners (community organizations) that lend out equipment at no cost for youth/families to continue their education/experience and for the pure fun of playing a sport. During the Y sessions, which are provided in an array of locations that include green spaces, libraries, schools, churches, and community organizations, youth are provided hydration stations and healthy snacks to keep them energized. The program is year-round and averages 1-3 times per week at each location.