In August 2016, Cottonwood Institute (CI) took on a very important last minute project to officially have our Community Adventure Program (CAP) curriculum approved by the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education. This has been a long time coming and will open opportunities for work with more schools in Boulder County. Curriculum approval was… Read more »
The Denver Green School Tuesday/Thursday Community Adventure Program (CAP) class recently completed an Action Project to address an issue they studied and identified in their community: water pollution. The students spent several weeks designing and planning a project to address this problem and initiate change in their community. The project that they proposed was a clean-up of… Read more »
The students at STRIVE – Prep RISE are excited about the holidays, but with their environmental awareness on red (and green) alert, they wanted to reduce consumerism and environmental impact during the festivities. So, they started a series of events just before Thanksgiving break to help their community. First, they sent out tweets about how… Read more »
Cottonwood Institute is more than excited to welcome Vicki Whisenhunt to join our team as our new Administrative & Logistics Coordinator! This role has been a long time in the making and is much needed to support our growing programming needs. In addition to helping with administrative demands, she will work alongside our Program Manager, Taryn… Read more »
Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) announced that the Nature Kids/Jovenes de la Naturaleza (NKJN) Coalition in Lafayette, CO, which Cottonwood Institute is a lead partner for, won a $2.8M Inspire Initiative grant! NKJN will focus on a one-square mile area, in a network of public schools serving the lowest income children in the Boulder Valley School District…. Read more »
2016 has been an incredible year and we have big plans for 2017. Here are our “Top 5 Reasons To Invest In Cottonwood Institute” for #GivingTuesday and #COGivesDay this year: 1. We are connecting students to the great outdoors: “My weekend [camping trip] was super peaceful. I enjoyed myself up in the mountains because I… Read more »
Cottonwood Institute (CI) has been delivering environmental education and service learning programs for the past 13 years and we were curious: What are the CI alumni we taught years ago up to these days and how did our programs impact them reflecting back years later? So we set out to re-engage our alumni what we… Read more »
Recently, STRIVE Prep – Sunnyside Community Adventure Program (CAP) students headed up to the mountains outside Fairplay to explore the Beaver Ponds Environmental Education Center. They started off the trip on a beautiful Colorado morning by stopping at Staunton State Park for a short hike. The students learned about compasses and navigation and led the way to Davis… Read more »
For Cottonwood Institute (CI), 2016 has been a wildly successful year! CI coordinated 32 programs, served 391 students, delivered 18,163 program contact hours, and over 6,700 service learning project hours. This would not have been possible without the support of generous donors who help CI connect underserved students to the outdoors and empower them to make… Read more »
The fall semester is flying by and this weekend was CAP New Vista‘s final camping trip together as a group! After a quick gear check in Boulder on Saturday morning, we arrived at a camping spot near Taylor Mountain in Allenspark, CO. While the hike in was less than two miles, it was a great… Read more »
