19 Jul Outdoor Nation Youth Summit

Did you know that the average American child sits in front of an electronic device for 7.5 hours every day?  Or that many of our youth only spend 7 minutes outside each day? These are some of the facts that I learned this weekend while attending the Outdoor Nation Youth Summit held in Austin at the UT Thompson Conference Center and McKinney Falls State Park. 

Outdoor Nation was created as a result of the publication of Richard Louv’s book titled Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Kids From Nature-Deficit Disorder. The book discusses how our children’s high rates of obesity, anxiety, ADHD and depression can all be correlated with their nature deficient lifestyles.  Outdoor Nation is a national initiative of the Outdoor Foundation launched in 2010 that empowers young people to champion the outdoors – as athletes, artists, advocates and ambassadors.  Since 2010 they have hosted youth summits in cities across the U.S. ranging from Austin, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Denver, Twin Cities, and Atlanta.  Last Child in the Woods mainly discusses the nature deficiency in our children of younger ages, but Outdoor Nation focuses on engaging young people from the ages of 16-28. 

The summit consisted of 150 young people from all over Texas including the cities of Houston, Denton, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and of course, Austin.  On Saturday people split into small groups and came up with barriers for young folks participating in outdoor activities.  There were many barriers discussed but some of them were lack of financial resources, excessive time spent watching television, video games, and not having anyone to go with.  After discussing the barriers the small groups had the opportunity to work on project ideas that would translate into grant proposals to be presented on Sunday in front of all the conference attendants.  There were a total of 19 groups that presented project ideas and 8 of them were awarded grants ranging from $1000 to $2500.  The 1^st prize grant of $2500 went to a group called North Texas Kids Outside whose mission is to provide families in North Texas with a guide to all of the resources available to them in the area, from education to entertainment.  The grant will provide the financial resources for at least 15 families to attend family camping trips in various state parks across Texas through the Texas Park and Wildlife Department’s Outdoor Family program (http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/outdoor-learning/texas-outdoor-family/).

The entire weekend was full of hope, empowerment, unity, and action.  It is very easy for people to get comfortable being inside and to not take advantage of the beauty of our natural world.  We must continue to work together to shift our culture towards valuing our natural environment.  As Maya Angelou once said “if you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”  Well folks, we most certainly can change the trend of spending too much time indoors and begin to appreciate the benefits from spending time outside. 

Outdoor Nation still has many summits over the next few months.  For more information check out their website: www.outdoornation.org