Education and Engagement Specialist, Grow Outdoors South Carolina
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About The Position
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has a longstanding commitment to expanding opportunities for children, families, and communities to access the benefits of time spent outdoors developing lasting connections with the natural world. The vast majority of children in America spend most of their daily time indoors at child care centers, schools, parks, libraries, or at home. Time in nature-based environments offers lifelong benefits to rapidly developing bodies and brains, along with a greater inclination to become nature lovers and supporters as adults. Therefore, it is critical to advance the creation, activation and stewardship of high-quality outdoor spaces that become places where children, their caretakers and families can engage with nature and the outdoors on a daily basis. An initiative of NWF, Early Childhood Health Outdoors (ECHO) envisions a world where every young child experiences nature daily. Launched in 2017, ECHO has been working with communities throughout the United States to transform children's daily environments by enhancing opportunities to engage meaningfully in nature. By providing a combination of thoughtful landscape design and professional development opportunities for early childhood professionals, ECHO employs a health equity model that improves access to the benefits of nature for the children and caregivers who face the greatest barriers. In turn, naturalized play settings improve environmental health by helping to mitigate the impacts of extreme temperatures and air pollution on young children and their caregivers. Grow Outdoors South Carolina, a collaborative effort of the Division of Early Care and Education at the SC Department of Social Services (DSS) and the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Prevention at the SC Department of Public Health (DPH), aims to transform early childhood outdoor spaces into diverse naturalized environments that spark play and learning. To meet our shared missions, we are seeking an Education and Engagement Specialist to contribute to the application of the ECHO model through Grow Outdoors South Carolina.
