COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Department of Social Services and DHEC announced the partnership with National Wildlife Federation's Early Childhood Health Outdoors (ECHO) and the Natural Learning Initiative (NIL) to transform child care outdoor spaces.
As part of the Grow Outdoors South Carolina initiative, the new partnerships will help provide and create naturalized outdoor play and learning spaces for children.
"We deeply feel that it is the right of every child, no matter where they live to be able to form a personal bond with the natural world," said Senior Director of Design and Engagement at ECHO, Dr. Rebecca Colbert.
During their partnership announcement Monday, Colbert expressed why she wanted the the National Wildlife Federation to be a part of the Grow Outdoors initiative.
"ECHO team has been working with childcare providers around throughout country throughout a number of years on these initiatives," Colbert said. "What we hear are is we hear from people like Janice, who are experienced and dedicated early childhood providers who know how important these experiences are for the children in their care, but who my lack the resources to make this happen in their programs."
While ECHO will provide resources and training to child care providers to help them design and implement outdoor learning, NLI will provide equity-driven design thinking to help create the learning environments, according to NLI co-founder Robin Moore.
"Now we can see the synergy that happens between landscape architecture, public health, and human development," Moore said.
All of which is something Janice Ironside, the director and owner of Mega Child Developmental Center, has taken advantage of.
"We try to create the best environment possible for children based on best practices and through learning about the quality initiatives, all of the staff feel the same way," she said. "We just want to provide the best care for them and what helps now is being outdoors."
Outdoor education and play is not only encouraged by childcare providers, but parents to, according to Michael Flynn, whose four year-old son attends the Mega Developmental Center. "We were really excited when we first put him in the program about this green space. This green space we know is very important, so that was one of the big draws to the program."
The first group of child care centers to participate in Grow Outdoors SC with ECHO and NLI is currently being selected.
Once selected they will receive seed grant funding and technical support to enhance its outdoor play space.