Together we can facilitate personal and community wellbeing by learning outdoors.
Inreach/Outreach’s purpose is to revolutionize how students in rural Maine perceive and enact their abilities to affect positive change within themselves and their communities.
What is Inreach/Outreach?
Inreach/Outreach (I/O) is dedicated to engaging 3-10 year olds in Downeast Maine in exploration of the ways humans interact with and affect the natural world as a means of addressing personal and community resilience to change. Maine Outdoor School (MOS) will send professional educators into the classroom to teach two-day programs where students will work in teams, explore the natural world, identify sustainability challenges in their communities, and develop and implement solutions to those challenges. MOS will also be working with the classroom teachers to help them implement personal and community resilience curricula into their lessons.
Measuring our Success
To ensure the Inreach/Outreach program is having a lasting positive effect on Downeast Maine, we will implement a program evaluation so that we may makeconstant improvement in the following areas:
Learning
- Demonstrating place-based examples of classroom curricula to teachers
- Providing students with positive educational experiences
- Facilitating collaboration and critical thinking about real world problems
- Engaging students in service learning projects for their school
Action
- Increasing student engagement and interest in classroom curricula
- Enhancing the overall quality of classroom educational experiences
- Providing teachers with enduring educational themes or projects for their classes
Impact
- Increased critical thinking in students
- Increased civic engagement in students
- Increased quality of lower elementary school educational offerings in regional schools
What We Need
To launch the Inreach/Outreach program by September 2016 we need $55,000. This startup capital will fund:
- Program planning
- Curriculum development
- Teaching supplies
- Program delivery
- Transportation for students and teachers
- Program evaluation
- Legal counsel
- Insurance
- Program marketing
Challenges
Starting Inreach/Outreach will not come without some logistical challenges. Here are two key ways we can overcome these difficulties:
- Low population: Downeast Maine is a rural region with a low population density. Our highly mobile Inreach/Outreach program will allow us to reach the number of students we need to financially “float” the program.
- Financial need: Though our program will be financially self-sufficient within the first few years of its operation, we will need investors and donors to help make this possible in the meantime. You can help us make this a reality.
Other Ways You Can Help
Can’t spare a dime? No worries. There are TONS of ways you can engage with our efforts to start MOS’s Inreach/Outreach program:
- Share this campaign with your friends and family!
- Are you an artist? We will need help with branding, logos, and the layout of our brochures and newsletters!
- Are you a strong writer? It’s always nice to have a second set of eyes on our publications!
- Have a background in web design or videography? Let us know! We would love your help with our website!