Friends of the Parks

Forest Preserve Initiative – Goal 3:

“Involve more urban youth, especially students in underserved inner-city high schools, in natural area-based environmental education and service learning opportunities.”

Broadening Environmental Education Opportunities for Inner-city Youth

• Earth Team Teen Apprentices in forest preserves: The forest preserve field trip component of our after-school Earth Team teen jobs program allows more than 150 inner-city teens to learn biodiversity concepts and try out restoration techniques. In summer.   The program provides teens from diverse backgrounds an opportunity to work for six weeks with FOTP instructors on biodiversity topics and woodland restoration projects in the forest preserves along the North Branch of the Chicago River.
• Chicago Public Schools Partnership: Adopt-an-Ecosystem: A new addition to our youth education efforts in the Forest Preserve Initiative is a new partnership with the Chicago Public Schools’ service learning department called “Adopt-an-Ecosystem” which links high school students with a nearby forest preserve, park or section of beach or river. We develop partnerships with science teachers from schools including Senn, Julian, Whitney Young, and Corliss High Schools; and the Discovery Academy and Bowen Environmental Studies School on the Bowen High School Campus. More than 100 students put in hundreds of hours of service in spring & summer doing scientific studies and restoration projects at Edgebrook Woods on the northwest side of Chicago, and at Whistler Woods in the Calumet area.