Providing Professional Development for Urban Youth Workers

PBHA- FIO Staff Member at Farrington

For the last several years, Farrington Nature Linc has offered to provide nature based trainings to the staff of the area camps and programs that visit during the summer. The goal was to find ways to encourage staff to broaden the nature experience for their campers by expanding beyond the one time visit to Farrington and making play in nature a bigger part of their whole summer program.

As the summer approached this year, a couple of our partner organizations, United South End Settlements and Phillips Brooks House Association, asked us to come and share our experience by teaching the skills of engaging with youth in nature wherever they may be.

Each workshop we ran focused on the mental and physical benefits of taking youth outside beyond the playground. We dove into the tried and true techniques we use both on our property at Farrington and in the playgrounds and parks where we run our after school programs.

Then, training participants had the opportunity to share the challenges they face in taking children outside and brainstorm with their peers about creating solutions to those problems. Since our spring workshops, we've seen many of the staff we trained out at Farrington. We were overjoyed to see how many are working hard to bring what they learned in their workshops to their youth in their camps.