Wow! This has been quite an adventure so far!

This project originated about a year ago when I was having a conversation with staff from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources – Division of State Parks and Trails. I had completed the Nature and Forest Therapy Guide certification through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides in 2021. For more than a year, I had been leading forest bathing walks through Whitewater State Park where I worked as a full-time naturalist. I was getting great feedback from walk participants and local health partners interested in creating more opportunities for folks to experience this form of nature-based healing. So I asked my colleagues at the DNR if there would be a way to help support community partners, especially BIPOC partners, in getting this training. There was interest but the same bureaucratic response; we’d love to but that’s not what we do.

So I reached out to our Southeast Minnesota Park Rx team, which I am a member of, and asked the same question. They are not a 501c3 so they do not have capacity to fundraise, etc. So I took the idea to our Board of Directors at Project Get Outdoors. We discussed the idea of training BIPOC community practitioners who work with BIPOC youth and young adults experiencing trauma. This focus was a perfect fit for the work we have been doing since 2005 to connect low-income youth and children of color to the outdoors.

I connected with Manuela Siegfried, Trainer and Training Coordinator for the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides, and we discussed the idea. She talked with her colleagues at ANFT and they were eager to support us in creating a southeast Minnesota-based cohort of BIPOC practitioners who work with youth and young adults experiencing trauma. Manuela connected me to folks with Chico University where they experimented with a specialized cohort to help local community members heal from the trauma of the forest fires that burned through the area in 2018. https://gfmc.online/media/2019/10-2019/california-state-university-chico-receives-funding-for-forest-therapy-for-community-recovery-project.html

After conversations with Chico staff, we developed a plan to focus on southeast Minnesota. Through my outreach work with Minnesota state parks, I was leading forest bathing walks for community -based organizations and health partners in the region. We were able to invite some of these groups to participate in this project as they had experienced these walks and had an understanding of what Nature and Forest Therapy is. We quickly found we had a waiting list of folks who were interested in this training opportunity. 

By and far, most people have not heard of forest bathing (known as Shinrin-yoku in Japan where the practice originated). I observed those who participated in my programs at Whitewater State Park were by and far white women of retirement age, many of whom already practice meditation, Thai-chi and other mindfulness practices. I received many confused expressions and questions when talking to folks about forest bathing, such as “Do I need to bring a towel?” or “This sounds like hippie stuff!” It was obvious there was a need for more education about this form of nature interaction, especially among BIPOC communities where health care resources are all-too-often limited.

As we developed our project outline and goals, we looked at the target audience for this effort. We saw the biggest need was among BIPOC practitioners. Representation is important in any field. If we want to reach BIPOC youth and young adults, we need to support the BIPOC practitioners who serve these youth. We need to make sure practitioners are aware this form of therapeutic practice exists and is proven to help enhance physical and mental wellbeing. We need to make sure BIPOC practitioners have support to be able to participate in trainings to develop these skills. The training to become a certified guide is equivalent to a college course. It requires 125-hours of class learning, followed by a 4-day in-person immersion experience. In 2023, the combined costs of these required classes is around $4,000.

As I mentioned, we had an overwhelming amount of people express interest in this pilot project. We prioritized the cohort candidates using the following criteria:

• Represent the BIPOC community

• Work with BIPOC youth and/or young adults experiencing trauma

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

We selected cohort members via an invitation process. We did not advertise this project except in talking one-on-one with community organizations. Priority was given to those community organizations that had participated in a forest bathing walk and therefore had an understanding of the practice.

We created a short, one-page application that each cohort candidate was asked to fill out. You can find the application template by clicking "More" at the top of this page. Every cohort member indicated they would need a scholarship to help cover their $2,000 matching costs.

We also recognized $4,000 is a lot to invest in a person, not knowing if they will follow-through with the training or remain living in Minnesota after completing the training. No matter where they go, they can take these skills with them, but that is hard to justify to Minnesota funders. As far as worrying about them completing the training or not, all we can do is trust they will do their best and offer them as much support as we can to help them be successful! If we continue to use these excuses as barriers to innovation, we will never move forward. We did require a $2,000 matching fund requirement and told cohort members we would help them find the matching funds if they or their employer could not.

We held an informational Zoom meeting in late July 2023 to share details about the project with the cohort candidates identified at that time. Then in late September 2023 we hosted an orientation meeting via Zoom to introduce cohort members and review project details and expectations. 

During the first two weeks of the ANFT on-line classes, we had a last-minute change in the roster as one member dropped out due to health issues. We were able to pull someone from the waiting list to re-fill that slot.

The on-line class sessions through ANFT are recorded so cohort members can watch them later if they miss a session. Attendance and participation has been very sporadic during the first few weeks of the training. Only two cohort members have attended all the sessions. One cohort member has only attended one. I am in regular communication with Manuela from ANFT and she keeps an attendance list on the Google Drive I can access. I am also added to the cohort WhatsApp group so I can be included on messages and communications with the group via that tool.

This morning I sent out a cohort check-in survey to touch base with each cohort member and get their feedback on how the training is going so far, what they are enjoying and what they are finding challenging. I will follow-up with one-on-one telephone calls for those who do not complete the survey.

I have received several email and text messages from cohort members expressing their gratitude for this opportunity. I can see some of them are really engaging in the training and sharing deeply personal stories and perspectives via WhatsApp.

Email to Healing Forest Cohort members:

"I am checking in with each cohort member to see how things are going. Manuela has offered to provide one-on-one coaching to those who feel they are struggling with the training and need some help. I am also available, all you have to do is reach out to me.

I know the burden feels heavy at times, but you are over half-way through the training now! You can do this!!!

Also, I wanted to remind you that we are hosting the in-person immersion at Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center in Lanesboro, MN on April 10 - 14. The immersion was explained when I invited you to participate in this project. It was also mentioned during the informational meeting and orientation meetings held in July and September 2023. The application you signed when applying to participate in this project also mentioned the immersion.

Typically, cohort members have up to two years to complete an immersion experience and most of the immersions are held on the East and West Coasts. We have scheduled this immersion here in Minnesota and made it part of this training so you do not have go on your own and coordinate your own funding and travel. This opportunity will also allow you all to gather together in-person and share in a deeply powerful cohort bonding experience in nature.

All room and board will be provided for this immersion.

We will send more details including a syllabus and packing checklist later in March. For now, please make sure your schedule is cleared for those dates. Arrival will be around dinner time the evening of 4/10 and departure will be late morning on 4/14.

During this immersion, you will receive your Project GO - Medicine Forest backpacks and additional training on how to use the backpack contents to engage youth with nature.

Please let me know if you cannot make the immersion. We are inviting other Minnesota guides who need to complete their immersion requirements to participate in our gathering in April. We hope to fill all of the open spaces.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Sara"

We lost three cohort members. Life got too chaotic and the time commitment to keep up with the course was too much. I tried reaching out multiple times in different ways (What’s App, email, text and phone call) to cohort members who were struggling but eventually I did not get responses from three of them. I am sad to think they may feel ashamed they could not follow-through.

Over the past several months, I have been busy grant writing and fundraising for this project. We went into the project thinking we had most of the funds secured, through government partners and employer matching funds. But the Minnesota Department of Health ran into major red tape and was not able to provide the $40,000 they had available to use before the end of September 2023. Only one employer of our 15 -member cohort contributed funding. We had planned that employers would match $2,000 toward the $4,000 training costs per cohort member. So funding has been one of our major hurdles.

Follow-through would be the second big hurdle. Our cohort focused on training BIPOC practitioners so they can share this practice with BIPOC youth and young adults experiencing trauma. In hindsight, we should have had a more rigorous application and vetting process to select candidates. We were pretty relaxed on allowing anyone who was BIPOC and interested to participate. There really should have been a referral process and possibly even an interview process to narrow down the list of folks who are really committed to this experience. We were working against a really short timeline and if I had it to do over again, I would pace the project more and give plenty of time for recruiting candidates (6 – 12 months). Of course we could have filled the slots with white, females who work in mental health and social services and they probably all could have paid out of pocket for their training costs, but that would completely defeat the purpose of our project in bringing these services to BIPOC youth and young adults while diversifying representation in the nature and forest therapy realm.

I have not been able to connect with cohort members on a one-on-one basis as I had hoped. Partly because I don’t want to overwhelm them with more meetings on top of the weekly classes they have. But it is important to designate a lead contact person who will continue to check in with cohort members and provide support and answers to their questions. I anticipate as their weekly classes wrap up at the end of April 2024, we will have monthly on-line check-in meetings and I will set up one-on-one chats with each cohort member to gather their feedback, suggestions and stories.

Cohort members are beginning to lead walks now as part of their homework. It has been fun to hear from them about their experiences and to see them gaining confidence in their new skills.

We will be hosting an immersion here in southeast Minnesota next week. I anticipate camaraderie and trust will grow through this experience. I will be leading training sessions to introduce our cohort members to our Healing Forest curriculum they can use when guiding young people on forest therapy activities.

We did secure $10,000 from the Minnesota Department of Health in late March and I have been purchasing materials for the Healing Forest backpacks. Each cohort member will receive a backpack at the immersion. We also opened up the immersion to outside guides. The additional lodging fees are helping cover some of our training costs.

We reached out to county public health offices in our region to see if they had funding that would fit with this effort. Only one county was responsive to our request and after several meetings, including one with the Minnesota Department of Health, they found a way to support this project through Statewide Health Improvement funding (SHIP) with the caveat that cohort members receiving these funds for their training costs would be required to participate in the Southeast Minnesota Park Rx meetings as well as monthly Healing Forest meetings facilitated by Olmsted County Public Health. This has been an awesome way to motivate cohort members and encourage their participation in public health conversations related to increasing access to nature-based wellbeing in our region.

Our local cohort members from Olmsted County have met multiple times and have already identified several ways to support the Park Rx effort. For example, one of our cohort members is a midwife and she is encouraging Park Rx conversations among the OB/GYN staff at her clinic. We are actually meeting this Friday with her clinical team to share information and plan a forest therapy retreat for the group. Another cohort member is a therapist with Fernbrook Family Services, an organization that provides therapists for several local school districts. She is working to pilot nature prescriptions in the therapy setting and helping us identify resources we need to be able to share information with patients about exploring local nature areas for health and wellbeing outcomes. Another cohort member works for Rochester Public Schools and is having internal conversations about how we might train more school counselors, teachers and administrators about forest therapy for self-care and for student wellbeing.

We are excited to see how our cohort members are able to weave this practice into the work they are doing to help children be healthy and strong!