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Programs - General - Programs

Eagle Eye provides access to hands-on exploratory learning on environmental topics and career bridging to natural resource fields. We use the power of nature and an interactive experiential learning process as catalyst for personal and organizational transformation.

Eagle Eye has a 19 year track record successfully bringing people together across racial, social, cultural, economic, geographic, age and educational lines delivering transformational programs in nature to urban young people through powerful partnerships with natural resource professionals serving as volunteer instructors.

Eagle Eye Institute uses a three tiered program model for social change:

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E.A.G.L.E Initiative

Earth Advocates: Green Leaders for the Environment

Eagle Eye Institute’s E.A.G.L.E Initiative reaches out to Tufts University students in order to engage their spirit, energy and passion for the environment as Champions in organizing our Learn About Forest programs. 

By simultaneously engaging Tufts University students and urban youth, we seek to inspire the gatekeepers of the natural world for future generations, bringing young people of different ages, races and backgrounds together with the common goal of caring for our environment.

Since it's inception 2010, two Program Champion interns reached through this initiative have been awarded the Tufts University Internship Grant, a competitive grant offered to a limited number of Tufts Students for valuable and impactful experience. Through the E.A.G.L.E initiative, Eagle Eye has also had two Tufts University Tisch Scholars, Annie Sloan and Cassie Pastorelle. All of these students’ involvement has also reached other segments of the Tufts Community, such as several students from the Tufts Mountain Club who assisted our Tufts Intern in leading Learn About Forest programs with urban youth from the Somerville Boys and Girls Club and Margaret Fuller House.  

Stewardship Programs

Following the Learn About programs the next step in the transformative process is to develop responsibility in newly aware participants.  Through stewardship, youth learn the value and the process of giving back to the land and to their ever-widening community. Program days help them see connections between responsibility to the land and to their communities and themselves.

Eagle Eye has developed three different models of Stewardship programs.

  • Conservation Stewardship

    A one day service learning program; youth learn conservation practices while engaging in hands-on stewardship work on conservation land

  • Community Stewardship

    Youth focus on needs of their urban community, working in teams to address local environmental issues

  • Leadership Stewardship Corps

    Over a summer, school year, or longer; youth engage in urban stewardship projects and share their knowledge and skills with peers and the public

 

Why are Eagle Eye programs important?

Urban youth of color represent in Eagle Eye’s experience a vast untapped resource of talent, energy, creativity, and passion that can be leveraged through a relatively simple yet powerful shift in the relationship the youth have to and with the natural world and the natural resource community.

Eagle Eye Institute's programs:

  • Provide access to rural nature for urban people they might not otherwise have
  • Increase environmental awareness among urban residents
  • Connect urban residents with natural resource professionals who help bridge them to placement, internship, or training that can lead to a rewarding career
  • Increase diversity within the environmental movement
  • Offer positive programming for youth that emphasizes stewardship, team-building, personal responsibility and leadership development
  • Open a pathway for urban people to become skilled and motivated workers in green, environmental, and natural resource professions
  • Create opportunities for diverse people to work together caring for the land

Eagle Eye’s Pathway to Success

Eagle Eye's experiential approach uses the power of nature as a tool for building community and to transform urban youth and the adults who work with them. Eagle Eye's proven programs provide entry points for urban young people to gain knowledge and awareness of their relationship with nature as they develop an understanding and connection with their roles as stewards of the natural environment. By working and learning alongside natural resource professionals, the young adults are exposed to rewarding careers in fields they might not otherwise consider as their capacity for environmental leadership is cultivated.

 

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In previous programs, Eagle Eye Institute has used the power of nature to transform urban youth through its Green Industry Career Pathway Program. This series of 1 and 3-day sessions provides young people the full 3-tiered sequence of experiences:

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