Access

All people have the right to access the tools, frameworks, and environments to discover and pursue their unique path and purpose in life. We believe in children's agency to chart their own course based on their innermost nature. We value each opportunity to increase access to inward discovery and outdoor experiences for people who may not otherwise have access. We are committed to providing free, low-cost, and sliding-scale programming, consultations, and transportation assistance. We directly offer and advocate to increase access to whole-person learning experiences through our networks of practitioners, educators, and outdoor education facilities.​

Unity

We value experiences that build unity, healing interactions, healthy relationships, and teamwork within households, learning communities, and between people of different backgrounds and identities. We work to cultivate the feelings of kinship and belonging rooted in the awareness of all of life's interconnectivity. We facilitate cultural exchange through inward discovery and outdoor experiences that unite people of different backgrounds. We provide outdoor education opportunities that connect Baltimore City with Baltimore County and beyond by delivering customized city tours and field trips out of the city.

​Inclusion

We increase access to integrative, outdoor learning for people with varying abilities, backgrounds, and identities. We value including blind, deaf, and differently-abled children in outdoor education, from high-ropes courses to sensory gardens. We work to increase diversity within outdoor summer camps by fundraising to provide transportation and tuition. We provide students of varying abilities in under-resourced schools with inclusive field trips. We also collaborate with our partners to fundraise to increase the availability of scholarships, low-cost, no-cost, and wheel-chair accessible inward discovery and outdoor education opportunities. ​

Nature Within Us

We all have an inner child with dreams and desires for a unique and fulfilling life. We all have an internal nature, our unique personality, with passion, purpose, wonder, and potential. We value the sense of awe within all of our inner children, the kind of wonder that pushes us from within to persevere even when learning becomes challenging. All youth and adults can re-member and re-ignite their inner flame of motivation if they can access whole-person learning tools and environments. By discovering Nature's wonders within and around us, we believe we can realize our inner power and actualize our potential.

Nature All
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Around Us

We value the air, water, shelter, food, land, and building blocks of life within and around us. Breathing, moving, sensing, and experiencing the elements outdoors connects us to older parts of our evolutionary history which are essential to develop and integrate with our modern selves. We strive to illuminate these innate connections through integrative and unifying experiences that include learning outdoors whenever possible. The evidence that getting outdoors improves our health, healing, concentration, and mood is abundant.[*] We guide youth and adults to act upon this evidence by discovering Nature as our greatest teacher, healer, and classroom.

Wholeness

We honor the dynamic connection between nurture and nature, the whole person: physical, emotional, relational, cultural, creative, intellectual, and spiritual. We believe in engaging the whole person by nurturing their innate nature, humanity, health, creativity, curiosity, identity, interests, passions, and direction. By unifying these integrative aspects, we guide youth and adults to connect with and become their whole selves. We work to provide youth and adults with the frameworks and tools to implement holistic approaches as they learn, teach, heal, and unite.

Uniqueness

We co-design a unique, customized approach with each individual and group according to their identities, challenges, and goals. We know extrinsic reward and punishment, evaluation, restricted choice, restricted time, surveillance, and competition kill intrinsic motivation and creativity.[*] One size truly does not fit all. Rather than adhering to a preset curriculum or unit, we uplift each participant's uniqueness by allowing their inner being to be the curriculum. Each individual must access their unique doorways of discovery and permit themselves to pursue their unique path of personal meaning and relevance.  ​

Inner Power

We value the self-empowerment and actualization that stems from discovering and nurturing the parts of ourselves that we have not had sufficient opportunity to access or develop. The demands of modern life, the distractions of technology, and the pervasive problems of inequity and injustice contribute to our disconnection from ourselves, each other, and the earth. Yet, we each have the power to nurture our inner spark into a fire that empowers us to learn, teach, heal, unite, and be the stars we are. Others can help us by guiding us and providing us with the right tools and environment, but it is the power and wonder of nature within us that heals us when we create the conditions for it to emerge.