Focus On . . .YOUTH ACTION & FUN
The Problem: School is out, what is there to do?
The Solution: Take action, explore, have some fun!
Wherever you live, there are fun things you can do to explore your environment, protect your environment, and enjoy your environment.
YOUTH ACTION & FUN Websites
Recommended by the Editors of EcoISP.com
Get Outdoors:
Camping, hiking, or watersports with your family or your friends can be great fun, whether you're doing something brand new or visiting a favorite place. Choosing the perfect location to explore is easy on the Internet.
Sunset at Point Reyes National Seashore (Photo courtesy NPS)
North America's national parks and forests, seashores and marine sanctuaries are for everyone to enjoy. The National Park Service has an interactive map that lets you click on your state to see where the parks are, and then click on the state map to visit each individual park. Let's go to Colorado where it's fun to slide down enormous mountains of sand at the Great Sand Dunes National Monument. An In Depth page shows you photos, trail descriptions, backcountry campsites, how to get here, and what to see and do once you arrive.
Clicking on the state of California can take you on a visit to the Point Reyes National Seashore - 147 miles of hiking trails, backcountry campgrounds, and numerous beaches. Kayaking, biking, hiking, beachcombing, and wildlife viewing over the 100 square mile park, including 32,000 acres of coastal wilderness area less than 100 miles north of San Francisco.
All 50 states have clickable locations to explore. Do you want to explore the endangered species of Kentucky's Mammoth Caves? Click here. The nation's largest national seashore, the Gulf Islands National Seashore stretches from Mississippi to the eastern tip of Santa Rosa Island in Florida and some sections of the park offer candlelight tours and full moon walks among lots of daytime activities.
Many national parks, forests, and monuments, Bureau of Land Management lands, and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service lands, as well as the camping areas within them now charge a fee for entrance, so be prepared to pay $5 or $6 for each day you use a facility or $50 for an annual pass providing admission to any national park charging an entrance fee. Click here for a list of all parks, historic sites and lakeshores that charge a fee.
You can get involved in protecting America's forests by logging onto the Smokey Bear Junior Forest Rangers website. Smokey offers tips about how to find a campsite and protect it from fire, posters, trading cards, stories and links to all the parks in each state.
Checking out Utah's Arches National Park (Photo courtesy NPS)
Many state and national parks have a Junior Rangers program especially for young campers like the one run by Oregon State Parks. When you enroll in the program, you receive a Junior Ranger Passport that you can fill with passport stamps by completing activities. Junior Rangers with filled out passports receive awards.
At national parks, completing Junior Ranger activities earns you a special badge and patch. In Florida, for instance, while becoming a junior ranger, you can learn more about South Florida's four National Parks, Everglades National Park, Biscayne National Park, Dry Tortugas National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve, their different habitats and why each park is a unique and special place. Ask for a Junior Ranger booklet at any park visitor center.
Canada has some of the most exciting, unspoiled wild areas in North America protected in its national parks. Getting there is easy at the Parks Canada website where there is another interactive map. In the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, the Banff National Park offers a kids website where you can hear the sounds of elk and wolves and listen to the Banff Park radio. A world famous ski resort in winter, in summer there are 11 campgrounds open plus hiking and fishing, and the relaxing Canadian Rockies Hot Springs.
Farther east, you can explore the Sagueney-St. Lawrence Marine Park through virtual video tours that take you into the world of the white beluga whales. If you want to visit in person, everything you need to know to get there is right on the site.
For young people interested in canoeing Canadian waterways, there's lots of opportunity at the Ontario based Paddlefoot, specializing in canoe trips, white water canoe trips, youth adventure camps, and leadership trips for all ages and skill levels.
Environment Canada has a new youth website where you can find out about influencing the Canadian government's environmental policies through the Youth Round Table, check out jobs and internships, and get a list of environmental events taking place across Canada and around the world.
A comprehensive environmental Events Calendar is online at the Environment News Service website. If you have an event you want publicized, email information to: support@ens-news.com
These young reporters from Lebanese, Vietnamese, and Haitian communities will travel to various Parks Canada sites in Eastern Canada. (Photo courtesy Parks Canada)
Sharing your travels with others through writing, photography or video can be the passport to a journalistic career. This year seven Montrealers are doing just that as they travel to parks in eastern Canada as part of the Young Reporters of Canada program.
Young people from anywhere in the world can submit environmental news stories and photographs for publication to the Environment News Service and Horizon International Youth Environmental News Desk. News reports on successful environmental endeavors written by people up to the age of 19 will be published and distributed worldwide by ENS, the original international daily newswire of the environment, and featured on the Horizon Solutions Site. Contests, a chat room and examples of successful environmental endeavors can be found at the Horizon Solutions Site for Kids. You can contribute your ideas for solutions to environmental problems and earn a credit on the site.
Lycos lists 21 news and information websites geared for young people at: http://dir.lycos.com/Kids%5Fand%5FTeens/News/
State parks offer lots of fun things to do. Find the parks in your state by logging on to any search engine such as AllTheWeb and typing in the name of your state and the words "state parks."
Camps and Organized Groups
Privately owned and operated camps and summer programs can be fun, if sometimes costly. The Internet offers ways to explore what's available whether you want to stay near home or adventure far away.
The American Camping Association (ACA) has a working database of the more than 2,000 camps have earned ACA accreditation. It can help you choose a camp that offers outdoor activities from backpacking and wilderness trips to boating or caving from a pulldown menu on the website.
CampPage offers a comprehensive listing of summer camps and wilderness programs for youth in the United States and Canada. This page leads you to a wide range of camps like Cheerio Adventures, a YMCA wilderness trips program designed for young people ages 10-16 to experience mountain biking, backpacking, kayaking, white water rafting, caving, canoeing, and rock climbing while teaching minimum impact camping skills to preserve the natural environment. You can learn about the National Wildlife Federation's summer environmental adventure programs at the Wilderness Education Institute in the Rocky Mountains. Past activities have included working on an organic farm and examining glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park. Campers enjoy overnight backpacking trips in nearby Roosevelt National Forest, rock climbing, fishing, singing around the campfire, hearing storytellers, and playing early morning ultimate frisbee games. Once back at school, the National Wildlife Federation also offers a national network of campus activists that engage in campus greening projects.
These CampPage links can take you out of the country too. There's one to the Costa Rica Outward Bound School, an extension of the U.S. based challenging Outward Bound adventures, where you can choose to explore whitewater rafting, studying reef and rainforest, emphasize learning the Spanish language.
Bluegrass Wildwater Association 2002 beginner clinic at the Emory/Obed river confluence in Tennessee (Photo by Barry Grimes courtesy American Whitewater)
Back in the United States, American Whitewater allows young people to conserve and restore America's whitewater resources and enhances opportunities to enjoy them safely. American Whitewater (AW) maintains a complete national inventory of whitewater rivers, monitors threats to those rivers, publishes information on river conservation, and provides technical advice to local groups. AW organizes sporting events, contests and festivals to raise funds for river conservation, including the Ocoee Whitewater Rodeo in Tennessee and the annual Gauley River Festival in West Virginia, the largest gathering of whitewater boaters in the nation.
The Summer Lady offers a free of charge recommendation service that matches camps, student tours, and summer programs to individual tastes. Whether you are interested in basketball, baseball, football, volleyball, soccer, hockey, golf, tennis, swimming, roller blading, dancing, theater, scuba, water skiing, kayaking, sailing, arts and crafts, weight loss, computer skills, language skills, travel, community service, school programs, wilderness adventures, horseback riding, or gymnastics, she has been placing young people for 20 years, in over 300 summer programs.
Thirty kids from across the country are going to the Amazon this summer with the EarthKids program where they enter real-life, project-oriented learning situations and work with residents of the Peruvian Amazon to address environmental issues in the rainforest. The kids, all over 12 years old, travel under the direction of teachers and parents and are led by the Chairman of Widener University's Department of Environmental Science, Dr. Steve Madigosky.
City Fun:
Kids Go Wild with the Wildlife Conservation Society. Based at New York's world famous Bronx Zoo, the animal experts at this site can introduce you to all the world's creatures.
Gorillas at the Bronx Zoo (Photo courtesy Bronx Zoo)
One of the largest international conservation organizations in the world, the Wildlife Conservation Society operates five wildlife parks in the New York City metropolitan area. The society has over 300 research and conservation projects in 52 countries. The goal of these projects is to save wild animals and the wild lands they live in.
Find a zoo or aquarium near you if you live in the United States or Canada. Just log onto the American Zoo and Aquarium Association website's Search page.
Each listing is hotlinked to take you to the zoo or aquarium of your choice such as the Caribbean Gardens in Naples, Florida that offers activities and fun inside a historic 52 acre botanical garden founded in 1919. Cruise past trees of monkeys, lemurs, and apes living in natural island habitats on the Primate Expedition Cruise.
Or you can explore California's fabulous Monterey Bay Aquarium without leaving home through its five webcams. There's one that takes you to the largest aquarium window in North America to watch tunas, barracuda and bonito being fed in the Outer Bay exhibit.
The New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts also has webcams that peer into a giant ocean tank or watch penguins. They have a special section for kids with things to do like building your own deep sea vent.
All zoo and aquarium websites have directions to their locations, and many have tips for visitors that help you avoid long lines or time your trip to see special shows.
Believe it or not, the U.S. Government has lots of fun things for young people to do at a site called FirstGov for Kids, and many of them involve the environment. A Plants & Animals section of this site can take you to great photos of the California desert or an Endangered Species picture book to download and color or get serious about saving these species at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's site Especially For Kids. You can explore space and the natural world with NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has a special section For Kids Only with lots of games and photos. On the Recreation section of this government site, you can find an E-Zine called Kids Outdoors or explore America's Millenium Trails.
And speaking of trails, there are hundreds of miles of bike and hiking trails reconstructed from abandoned railway lines. The Trails from Rails website was designed to give cyclists a list of many of the best bicycle touring trails in the United States. Many of these pathways also allow cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, horseback riding and roller blading. Most of the routes go through small towns and give you a chance to see and experience rural America.
Want to explore outer space? The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado has created a kids space site, Windows to the Universe with games, a space art museum, tools for exploring space and chat room.
When it's time to go back to school you might want to attend a school where the focus is on environmental education. If that appeals to you, visit The Environmental Schools USA with four residential schools in the Northeast and Canada.
Environmental Groups:
OK, you're exploring the environment - now you want to protect it. Young people have got dozens of groups going that you can work with to safeguard the Earth. Youth for Environmental Sanity hosts worldwide summer Action Camps that empower youth to take action on environmental issues. Founded in 1990 by 16 year old Ocean Robbins and 19 year old Ryan Eliason, YES! has inspired the formation of more than 400 non profit organizations working for positive change. Alumni have started recycling programs, initiated community gardens and park cleanups, set up marches and rallies to speak out on issues like environmental justice, and started socially responsible businesses.
Girls work together to get over the wall on a challenge course at a Colorado Summer Science Adventures camp. (Photo courtesy NREL)
The Center for Environmental Citizenship has been training and organizing college students in leadership skills for 10 years. It is supported by Greenpeace and by the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.
Roots & Shoots is the international environmental and humanitarian program for young people founded by chimpanzee scientist Jane Goodall who lived alone for years with the chimps of Tanzania's Gombe National Park. Its mission is to foster respect and compassion for all living things, to promote understanding of all cultures and beliefs, and to inspire each individual to take action to make the world a better place for the environment, animals and the human community. All Roots & Shoots members, from pre-kindergarten to university, demonstrate their care and concern for living things through service projects in their communities.
Earth Team based in Walnut Creek, California, is a network of high school environmental leaders, classes and clubs. Earth Team's mission is to create a new generation of environmental leaders by introducing - into the classroom and the community -environmental experiences that are so active and engaging that they inspire dedication to a healthy environment.
Find out about Native Americans and the environment at the Indigenous Environmental Network site of the National Council for Science and the Environment. Lists of tribes and links to their websites can be found at NATIVE.
Still looking for an environmental group to work with? Try the list put together by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Wherever you go, you'll want to Leave No Trace. This national non-profit organization promotes and inspires outdoor recreation through education, research and partnerships. Leave No Trace builds awareness, appreciation and respect for our wild lands.
We've been enjoying compiling this list so much that we could go on and on...But you can do that yourself. Just open any search engine and type in the words "youth" and "environment" or any other search terms that describe your interests. Have Fun!
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