Project Get Outdoors, Inc.

Summary

From October 2023 through November 2024, Project Get Outdoors (GO) organized and facilitated a regional cohort of health care/mental health/recreational therapy practitioners to participate in a Nature and Forest Therapy Guide certification program so they could begin implementing nature-based therapeutic programs and activities for youth they serve. Project GO provided participants with tools and resources to help facilitate nature therapy activities for children and young adults.

Participants included providers from a cross-section of the service community including schools, colleges and non-profit organizations and social service and public health staff from local counties.

Participants were invited by Project GO and priority was given to those who:

· Represent BIPOC communities

· Work with BIPOC youth and/or youth experiencing trauma

· Work for non-profit organizations, schools, colleges or county social service/public health departments

Vision

We imagine a world in the not-so-distant future where every child in Minnesota has access to the outdoors during school and at daycare. In this world, our children do not fear nature; they embrace it. They have opportunities to get dirt under their fingernails and feel the squishy mud between their toes. They get to hear the sounds of the breeze blow through the forest and the waves gently lap along a lakeshore. They feel the sunshine on their skin and smell the sweet, damp earth after a rainstorm. They get to feel the pride of having climbed a tree, caught a fish, built a fort or planted a garden. They know how to find a sense of peace by sitting quietly under a tree or laying in the grass. They know they are but one small being among countless beings of many shapes and sizes in this world and that they have just as much to teach the world as each plant and animals has to teach us. And they know they can always turn to nature for respite and peace; to find a safe space where they are not judged and there are no expectations.