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Cedar Cove
We have a tough decision to make. It has become evident in the past few years that the tide has gone out in the educational side of the environmental movement. As a result, it has become more and more difficult for the institute to continue financially. Simply put, there has not been enough interest in our programs to generate the income needed, and the institute has not been able to create enough new material to satisfy those who just want some “pick up and go” activities and games. We are losing programs faster than we are seeing new ones established. We still have lots of great material on the drawing board (in varying stages of development), but not enough volunteers and opportunities to pilot and complete it.
What happened to the field we serve? Most outdoor centers are client-driven, not program-driven. In their view, they must constantly hustle to meet the expressed needs and desires of their clients, whatever those might be, rather than becoming proactive in selling an expensive earth education program. Most nature centers are still caught in the web of Victorian nature study, plus local expectations and funding, and most schools are facing ever greater financial constraints and ever more reluctant teachers.
The prospects for establishing programs in additional countries are not good. Our programs are just too rigorous and costly for most sites. In the US, they have succeeded primarily as entrepreneurial enterprises run by the institute’s Associates. In Canada, school systems and a couple of major outdoor centers have supported them. And in Australia, the Girl Guides took them on. Lots of places in other countries would like to offer them, but when their administrators assess the financial realities and our restrictions on their use, there is little support, and even where there is, we have found it hard to keep up with helping them.
In short, the horizon looks and feels rather bleak for our work. It is a sad reality that just as the planet is facing a century of ecological catastrophe, there are less educational resources available to address the causes, and large numbers of people are in denial about
what is happening.
To complicate matters for the institute, the individual pas- sions that enabled us to reach so many educators and interpreters around the world for over four decades have dwindled as well. The old-timers turned their attention to more local, job-related pursuits, plus their own families, and the “family” of institute volunteers found more gray heads and empty seats at its table. As the field changed, we had little success in reaching out and recruiting newcomers to fill those seats. Everyone knows that it takes a lot of time and energy to run our programs, but it also takes a lot of time and energy to support them through an international office and home. Cedar Cove stands at the crossroads of these realities.
Essentially, the institute has two assets: intellectual property and land. The value of the intellectual property is fading as our materials grow older, and there are limited resources
Annual Report/15