Community Spotlight: Kingston, New York

With a population of just 24,000, Kingston, New York, is a relatively small city — but the city and local nonprofits have made a big commitment to connecting families and kids to the benefits of time in nature. Over the last decade, they’ve built walking and biking trails throughout Kingston, increasing access to its 13 parks. They’ve created community vegetable and pollinator gardens. They’ve developed youth programming to support environmental education and green jobs training for Kingston’s youth, and much more. 

As nature connection resources and programming continue to grow in Kingston, the city and its partners are committed to making sure all residents can benefit. There have been some challenges, like different organizations working separately, gaps in communication with the community, and racial and socio-economic barriers to access, like language, internet access and transportation. Yet there’s also been a shared effort to bridge these divides.

Enter the Kingston Nature Access & Connection Team, a coalition that aims to bring cohesion and collaboration among local nonprofits, the Kingston School District and Kingston Parks & Recreation — and to help remove the barriers to nature access in Kingston. 

In 2023, the coalition successfully applied to become a Nature Everywhere Community, focusing on the intersection of youth development, community health and well-being, and socio-economic opportunity, especially for youth. Their vision is a future in which all Kingston youth have a meaningful connection to nature. 

The core Nature Everywhere Kingston team includes:

• Wild Earth (lead partner): Local nonprofit Wild Earth leads nature-based programs for children, youth and families. Since 2015, Wild Earth has been working with the Kingston City School District, providing field trips and year-round guided recess and after-school activities.
• City of Kingston Parks & Recreation: The Kingston Parks & Recreation department oversees 13 parks, three community centers, a pool, and a nature center, and offers summer camps, after-school programming, and year-round recreation programs for all ages.
• Kingston City School District (KCSD): With 6,400 youth in seven elementary schools, two middle schools, and the Kingston High School, KCSD is a proudly diverse community that benefits from a multitude of strong community partnerships.
• Kingston YMCA Farm Project: As an urban, youth-run farm, the Kingston YMCA Farm Project provides field trips, a summer camp program, and employment for over 100 Kingston High School students — who grow more than 5,000 pounds of produce each year.
• Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County (CCEUC): The CCEUC works with the city government, school districts and families to support economic vitality, ecological sustainability and social well-being. 

For the Nature Everywhere Kingston Team, equitable access to nature means providing physical access, education and awareness while addressing barriers, like language, mobility, equipment and skill level. Perhaps most importantly, it means building engagement and a felt sense of belonging and safety by creating opportunities for families and youth to have a strong voice in shaping nature access and connection in Kingston.

To begin their journey, the Kingston team joined eight other communities for a Nature Everywhere Vision Lab in Austin, Texas, to explore proven nature connection strategies and connect with technical assistance experts. 

From there, Nature Everywhere Kingston completed a landscape scan, a process in which they connected with diverse local organizations and leaders to understand the opportunities that currently exist for youth to access nature spaces, along with the gaps and barriers to participation.

The team also created a Nature Everywhere Kingston landing page, providing a place for their community and potential partners to learn about the initiative, the benefits of nature connection — and the many ways they can get involved, like joining a focus group, taking a survey or making a donation. 

Over the next year, Nature Everywhere Kingston will build on this work by:

• Engaging youth and families through surveys, social media campaigns and community events to create a vision for equitable access to nature in Kingston.
• Creating a Kingston Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights to guide ongoing planning and policy development in Kingston and support the fundamental right of all children to play, learn and grow in nature.

The Nature Everywhere Kingston team received a seed grant of $40,000, and hopes to garner further investments from local businesses, foundations and government support. Nature Everywhere partners Children & Nature Network, National League of Cities and KABOOM! will also help Kingston track outcomes and communicate the impact of their work. 

Nature Everywhere Communities initiative

The Nature Everywhere Communities initiative was launched in November 2023 by the Children & Nature Network, National League of Cities and KABOOM!, with the goal of advancing equitable access to nature everywhere children live, learn and play in 100 communities by 2025. 

The effort builds on lessons learned over the past nine years of providing technical assistance, training, resources and grants in more than 50 U.S. cities through Cities Connecting Children to Nature, a program specifically designed for municipal leaders. Nature Everywhere Communities is an expansion of this proven approach, as it welcomes leadership from both city and regional governments as well as school districts and the nonprofit, philanthropic and private sectors. 

Through a competitive application process, communities are selected to join the Nature Everywhere Communities initiative. They receive assistance in strategic planning, technical support and start-up funding to develop and implement community-driven plans for connecting children to nature-based experiences and learning. 

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