The Leave No Child INSIDE
Central Ohio Collaborative

The Leave No Child INSIDE Central Ohio Collaborative is one of over forty grassroots collaborations/initiatives that have been organized by concerned citizens around the country and world since the publication of Richard Louv’s 2005 best selling book: Last Child in the Woods–Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. In his book, Louv compiles an impressive number of scientific studies that show our children today are living indoor, sedentary, highly structured, and denatured lifestyles that are making them sick, and putting our natural world at risk. He offers equally impressive and hopeful research that shows that children’s direct contact with nature is the antidote to the increasing number of childhood ailments such as obesity, depression, and stress, and that this direct contact is also essential if our children are to become stewards of the natural world.

The Leave No Child INSIDE Central Ohio Collaborative was started in September, 2007 after the first annual Leave No Child Inside Central Ohio Collaborative Summit was held in Columbus, Ohio. The Summit was first proposed by Jenny Morgan, a local leader in the Children and Nature Movement, and organized by Jenny, Alice Hohl, and a handful of other concerned citizens. The goal of the summit was to bring people together from a host of disciplines to discuss and share strategies as to how we can get more of our central Ohio children up, outside, moving, and reconnected with their natural world, and to share the resources needed to put these strategies into action. The Leave No Child INSIDE Central Ohio Collaborative and its web site were both launched from this initial summit. The mission of the Collaborative is to create, via our web site/blog and annual summit, the opportunities for sharing/exchanging ideas and information about this important issue, and to continually build a community around these ideas.

Although there is NOT a national Leave No Child Inside ‘˜organization’, the Children and Nature network (ChildrenandNature.org), which was co-founded my Richard Louv, informally serves as the hub for these regional campaigns. While this national network does not ‘organize’ or dictate to these regional campaigns, it guides the movement with its wonderful and very informative web site and annual leadership conference. This ‘˜hands off’ approach is intentional and it stems from the network’s philosophy that social and cultural change must arise from the ground up, not the from the top down, and indeed, the Children and Nature movement has evolved exactly so.

The Leave No Child Inside Central Ohio Collaborative, which is growing every day, presently consists of over 35 organizations as well as individual members. Members include health officials, civic and community leaders, youth organizations, camping organizations, the Columbus Zoo, educators, urban designers, and more. You can find a complete listing of Collaborative members at .