No Child Left Inside

Today's post has a little more to do with my work than anything. It is, however, something that I've been thinking about all day long so I might as well share it with you all. The No Child Left Inside Coalition (NCLI) is an organization that is working to bring strong education about our natural worlds to kids in school. NCLI's focus is to pass the No Child Left Inside Act. This federal legislation, if passed, would provide major funding for states to be able to provide high-quality environmental education.

There are over 600 organizations that are members of the NCLI Coalition and they range from education centers, businesses, outdoor recreation groups, environmental groups, and to public health agencies. The organization that I work for, The Utah Society for Environmental Education (USEE), is also a member of the NCLI coalition and the NCLI Act basically embodies a lot of what I do at USEE.

Today, I received an email from the NCLI Coalition notifying me of a very important event. The date has been set for Congress to vote next week on the No Child Left Inside Act. This is a chance for me to get the word out! I contacted my representative, Jim Matheson, and sent him an email asking him to support the NCLI Act in next week's House vote.

Do you want to make a difference in Environmental Education? Well, contact your representatives and ask them to support this important piece of legislation. It was a piece of cake for me to do this, and I was very surprised how simple it was. Just quickly fill out some information and presto, NCLI already has a letter prepared with all of the details! You can even edit the email so that it says exactly what you would like it to. (I have heard it said that for every person that a representative hears from is considered to represent 1,000 other people who haven't said anything. We'll see how this goes, I guess...) For more background information on NCLI, check out the post on Green Fork's blog.

And now, after all of this, one of my favorite things that the NCLI Coalition has done is a movie entitled Get 'Em Outside. It is about the importance of environmental education in all of our lives and is only about five minutes long. Definately worth it. I highly recommend this movie (as I have watched it several times myself), especially if you have kids. And so, without further ado: