TAKE ME OUTSIDE FITNESS AND OUTDOOR EDUCATION FOR YOUTH

1. Each year in October we organize Take Me Outside (TMO) Day a national event directed at educators students & administrators across Canada. TMO Day is a week’s worth of programs & events that address all four purposes. It is intended to educate all of those involved around physical activity sedentary screen time nature deficit disorder & promoting health and wellbeing. 2. The Take Me Outside For Learning Challenge is a year long (Sep – Jun) program that encourages and supports weekly outdoor experiential education for students & teachers across Canada. TMO creates curates & delivers regular monthly resources activities & professional development opportunities that suit varying grade levels subjects & curricula to participating educators that help support them to facilitate outdoor learning. 3. Annually TMO hosts & facilitates a countrywide filmmaking competition for students. The assignment involves children and youth exploring the outdoors around their homes & communities & producing a short video featuring how they like to find adventures and spend their time exploring the outdoors in Canada. Through storytelling and filmmaking students get outside & experience for themselves that value of time in nature. The films are educational for students teachers & the general public. 4. Since the fall of 2021 TMO & one of our partners (The Outdoor Learning Store) have been providing outdoor learning workshops directed at K-12 educators. These workshops focus on practical teaching tips resources and activities that help enable educators to use the outdoors as a pedagogical approach to teaching their students. 44 000+ educators participated in our 2024 seasonal Outdoor Learning workshops. The workshops put on in partnership with The Outdoor Learning School and Store featured incredible leaders in outdoor learning from across Turtle Island/North America. In 2024 we reached 70 000 educators in a TMO event or campaign. That resulted in 885 000 students & learners being involved in initiatives that engaged them in the outdoors. 5. Since May 2023 TMO along with partners has been hosting a national outdoor learning conference to 465 educators to attend 140 different sessions. These educators are involved with Canadian organizations whose mandate involved advancing outdoor learning addressing health & wellbeing physical activity & sedentary screen time and combatting nature deficit disorder.