Closing the Nature Gap: How Policy Gets Kids Outdoors | Jackie Ostfeld, Sierra Club Outdoors for All
How Jackie Ostfeld of the Sierra Club is closing the nature gap — and why getting one million kids outdoors is ultimately a money question.
A few years ago I took my fourth-grade class to Joshua Tree National Park. We used their free Every Kid Outdoors passes — one per family, covering an entire school year of national parks and public lands. We went rock climbing. We told ghost stories that weren't actually scary (a golden screwdriver was involved). I still hear from some of those kids now, years later, studying environmental science and marine biology in college.
I never thought much about where that pass came from. It just existed — a good, obvious thing a government program did for kids like mine.
Jackie Ostfeld helped build it. Twice.
Jackie directs Sierra Club's Outdoors for All campaign and co-founded the Outdoors Alliance
for Kids back in 2010, when — as she put it — there wasn't much of a voice in Washington for getting kids outdoors. The first version of the program, then called Every Kid In a Park, grew out of Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative. A few years later, a new administration tried to end it, citing cost. So Jackie and a bipartisan coalition went to Congress and passed the Every Kid Outdoors Act to save it for good.
That's the part of Jackie's story that stuck with me most: how much of this work is quietly rebuilding the same bridge twice, because the alternative is losing it.
Jackie didn't start in policy. She started as a naturalist — four years teaching kids directly, first in rural South Carolina, then outside Boston, then in California. It was in South Carolina that she first noticed something: the kids who came to her environmental education center were either all white or all Black. The town's segregation was written into who got outdoor experiences and who didn't. Later, working a single summer at a Napa camp, she watched the children of winery owners share a bunkhouse with the children of farmworkers — the second group there only because the Sierra Club was quietly paying their way.
"I started realizing early on," she told me, "that where you lived, what zip code you were in, what the color of your skin was, may actually dictate whether or not you've had access."
She eventually left direct teaching — not because she thought policy was more important, but
because she burned out. "I wasn't strong enough to do that work forever," she said, with real respect for the educators who do. Policy became the place she could keep contributing without the constant sunrise-to-campfire grind.
Here's the moment that stopped me, though: Jackie's point that almost nobody, across the political spectrum, actually disagrees that kids should spend more time outdoors. The fight isn't ideological. It's about whether the government funds the systems that make it possible — transportation, green space, staffing — or doesn't.
"That's where the challenges are," she said. Not belief. Money.
She also walked me through research Sierra Club conducted with UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, studying whether immersive wilderness trips could reduce stress in two groups under real pressure — recently deployed combat veterans and youth from an economically distressed community. The result: a 29% decrease in post-traumatic stress symptoms and a 21% decrease in general stress, following whitewater rafting trips designed to trigger a sense of awe.
Jackie and the Outdoors Alliance for Kids just launched something called One Million Kids Outdoors. Since June, it's already reached more than 220,000 kids through over 180 partner organizations.
Here's the ask, and it costs nothing: if you have a fourth grader in your life, help them claim their free Every Kid Outdoors pass before the school year is over — it covers their whole family, at every federal park and public land, for free. Then, if you want to go further, join Jackie's coalition at 1millionkidsoutdoors.org.
Listen to this week's episode of Hopeful by Nature wherever you get your podcasts.
— Scott
If you're a parent, a teacher, an administrator, or an informal educator looking to get one Million Kids Outdoors, we should talk. I built Wildward Institute to support organizations, educators, and parents (like you!) building meaningful relationships between young people and the outdoors.
Let's get started with the Field Program Audit where we'll work together to learn how you can make your program more effient, more impactful, and more sustainable. I can't wait to work with you!
Learn more at wildwardinstitute.net.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Every Kid Outdoors pass — apply through the National Park Service's Every Kid Outdoors program
Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation
Greater Good Science Center (UC Berkeley) awe research, Dr. Dacher Keltner
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