National Summit – Getting Kids Outdoors

By Larry Schweiger

I was in Houston yesterday at National Wildlife Federation’s summit on getting kids outdoors.  We had over 1,000 attendees from 101 locations in more than 25 states focused on how we can counter the indoors deficit facing America’s kids today.  I left inspired by how much we can do to help kids increase the time they get outdoors and not only have a great time, but counter the obesity epidemic among our children.  Here is a blog cross-post from my colleague Christine Dorsey who also attended:

Did you know that the average American child spends 53 hours per week staring at some kind of electronic screen? Worse, the average boy or girl spends only 4-7 minutes a day in unstructured play outdoors.

Today, National Wildlife Federation hosted a national summit on children and the outdoors to explore the indoor childhood problem and what we can all do at the local, state and federal level to halt this dangerous trend.

More than 60 organizations from around the nation joined the summit by webcast to hear from national health and child experts. Just a few of the startling statistics:  read more.