Education, fun in the great outdoors

When Matt Kamin took over as executive director of the Children’s Nature Institute in April, he knew he was stepping into an important role. But he didn’t understand the true effect of the institute’s work until a few weeks later, when he found himself rumbling down the 10 Freeway with 60 rambunctious children from Boyle Heights.

“They were all screaming,” Kamin, 32, said with a smile on a recent morning. “You know how it is -- madness.”

Their school bus approached the coast and entered the tunnel that forms the transition between the 10 Freeway and Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica. The bus emerged from the tunnel, and the children suddenly were looking at the crystalline ocean.

“Dead silence,” Kamin said. “They were 20 minutes from their house. Maybe 30. But they had never seen the ocean before.”

The children were among 12,000 underprivileged, at-risk and special-needs students the institute will serve this year. Many of the children are autistic or homeless and in foster care.

The Franklin Canyon-based institute enhances the education of students from poor, underperforming schools by introducing them to nature and environmental studies. Now in its 24th year, the institute is one of the Southern California nonprofit groups featured as part of The Times’ annual Holiday Campaign.

The institute’s organizers have armed themselves with studies linking nature-based education with children’s improved academic performance, reduced disciplinary problems, improved mental and physical health and greater dedication to environmental stewardship.

That idea seems to be catching on: Earlier this month, the stick -- yes, just a stick -- was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, which praised its versatility, its ability to spark children’s imaginations and the fact that it is free. Studies have also shown that nature-based education can improve an array of skills, including science, math and vocabulary.

“But we have to get them to see it,” Kamin said. “These kids are living in concrete, going to school in concrete and then coming back home to concrete.”

Most children served by the organization go through a three-part education effort.

First, the institute visits a school in one of its two “Wonder Mobiles” -- a lab on wheels that uses teaching tools such as live “walking stick” insects to help educate students about camouflage.

The students are then taken on a field trip to a natural place, such as Temescal, Topanga or Eaton canyons. Then, the organization takes the children on an “urban nature walk” in their neighborhood -- “teaching them that they don’t need to live in a rich or an elite area to appreciate nature,” said Christina Bianchi, program director.

For schools to qualify for free programming, 70% of students must be enrolled in a free or reduced-price lunch program. More than 250 schools in Greater Los Angeles were served last year.

The agency also runs after-school programs and holds garden plantings and beach cleanups. Its budget for 2008-09 is roughly $600,000, some of it from “earned-income” programming aimed at families but most raised through grants, donations and events such as walkathons. The institute received $20,000 this year from the Los Angeles Times Family Fund.

Kamin is bracing for a difficult year. Major donors have told the organization that they will have to pull funding because of the economic crisis. Gifts from the business community have all but dried up, he said.

“It is very, very scary what is on the horizon,” he said. “Nonprofits will be suffering a lot more in the next year.”

Kamin spoke at the Malibu Lagoon, an unusual example of a Southern California saltwater marsh. A few minutes later, a school bus pulled up and 60 first-graders tumbled out, students from Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School in the City Terrace community.

During the next two hours, the students toured the lagoon with three volunteers, learning to identify coastal sage by smell, to spot seabirds that were gliding instead of flapping their wings and to walk like an egret.

“Do we want to leave [the park] like this or trample it and leave our trash behind?” volunteer Susan Silver asked the children.

“Leave it like this!” they shouted.

“Do you know the word ‘respect’?” she asked.

Six-year-old Victor Cortes raised his hand.

“We need to respect this place -- treat it like a baby,” he said.

At one point in the tour, Bianchi and a boy ran to catch up with the rest of the group. “Sorry!” she said when they caught up. “We were having a ladybug moment!”

--

scott.gold@latimes.com

--

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

A chance to give

Holiday Campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a McCormick Foundation fund. The McCormick Foundation matches all donations at 50 cents on the dollar. Unless requested otherwise, the Los Angeles Times Family Fund makes every effort to acknowledge in the newspaper donations of $100 or more received by Dec. 31. All donations will be acknowledged by mail in three to four weeks.

The gift is tax-deductible as permitted by law. Addresses will not be released or published.

For more information, call (800) LATIMES, Ext. 75771, or e-mail familyfund@latimes.com.

--

Mail donations (do not send cash) to:

Holiday Campaign

File 56986

Los Angeles, CA 90074-6984

Or donate now at: latimes.com/donate