Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast: Championing Nature for Kids (And Everyone Else)

By Ryan G. Van Cleave | June 2022

The last time Sarasota Scene checked in with Environmental Programs Coordinator Sabrina Cummings, it was pre-COVID 2020. She’d been with the nonprofit since 2018 and was at the forefront of all kinds of exciting things happening in terms of program development and community partner building. “Things have obviously changed since then,” she says with a laugh. “One of the things I’ve gotten better at is being more patient. Another is realizing how important consistency is for kids. A lot of people come and go in life, especially if you’re doing afterschool programs and stuff like that. But if you’re there for them and you show kids that you treasure them, they’ll treasure you back.”

Having been in the same role for four years allowed Sabrina to watch kids grow up. While she’s a steady 5’5, some of the kids are growing up by leaps and bounds. “They’re all getting taller than me. It’s very upsetting!” she jokes. Clearly, a terrific sense of humor is one of her superpowers for engaging with kids. As we all know, if you don’t work to fully engage kids, they won’t tune in, they won’t learn, and—especially for extracurricular academic efforts—they won’t keep coming back. But they do come back because she’s a consistent force for goodness and joy for them and for the environment. 

One of the things often overlooked by the public is Next Gen Conservation’s link to the land-saving priorities of Conservation Foundation. To Sabrina, one simply doesn’t exist without the other. “One thing that we all stand behind—this motivates all of us on staff—is that we’re in a race against time,” she says. “Within ten years, all of the land locally is either going to be developed or saved. We’re racing to find and preserve more places that kids of today and the next generation will be able to cherish.” So, she’s always careful to explain their shared conservation priorities and how programmatic priorities are inextricably linked to that. “Personally, but also professionally,” she adds. 

That’s one of many reasons why Sabrina is doing such a marvelous job of getting kids excited about nature via Next Gen Conservation, a free program which includes Youth in Nature and Nature Explorers. The former focuses on underserved middle and high school youth in Manatee, DeSoto, and Sarasota counties. The latter, Nature Explorers, is a youth education program for children in grades K-5. The goal with both programs is to create Wow! moments in nature, which is fairly easy to do since our region has such spectacular parks, preserves, and waterways. 

One of the changes Sabrina has noticed is that their youth partners are asking for more science-based programming and conservation activism. This leads to Sabrina creating activities and experiences that can be followed with, “Now here’s something specific you can do about water quality at home,” or “Here’s what you can tell your parents and your friends, so they know how to help the seahorse you just saw today.” 

What Sabrina likes about these kinds of citizen scientist efforts is that it keeps conservation from being too overwhelming or nebulous of an idea. That’s one of the larger current trends in nature education—hyperlocality, which brings things into a clear regional or local focus that directly impacts the concerns of a community. “A lot of our kids are local, so this is their home. Thinking about big environmental issues on that level helps them care more about what’s happening, and it also helps them feel as if what they do has a bigger impact, which it does.”

Something else Sabrina has noticed is that the kids are becoming more adventurous. When she first arrived in 2018, it was starting from the basics, doing very simple projects and activities that future programs could build on. These days, kids are asking all kinds of questions. “Hey, Miss Sabrina, can we go camping? Can we have a project where we fix up something locally? Can we take out the kayaks?” As a result, Sabrina is working to give kids—especially preteens and teens—the agency and tools they need to be able to visualize and then carry out the activities they want to do. It’s a pivot away from pure instruction to becoming more of a collaboration where she’s facilitating experiences rather than leading them. “A lot of the time, the kids end up leading themselves and my role is to make sure things are memorable but safe.”

Sabrina is constantly encouraging parents, grandparents, and families to invest in kids’ agency because it makes for more confident adults. It’s also the recipe for kids being more inspired and having more fun, she adds. Plus, the research-proven benefits—which include cognitive, emotional, social, and educational development—positively affect the whole family.

Perhaps Sabrina’s best educational asset is herself and how she models environmental responsibility and curiosity. For example, during COVID, she got into birding, and now she’s helping kids identify birds such as the painted bunting. “Don’t they look like they belong in a fantasy world with those multiple colors?” she asks them. “The red, green, and blue are just so out of this world!”

It’s also someone like Sabrina who inspires the next generation of good environmental stewards. “When was the last time you stopped to observe and contemplate the shape and color of a flower? When was the last time you really took in the smells and sounds of a pine stand?” Sabrina asks before explaining, “We should all be entitled to the opportunity to stop and just experience the lives of forests, forever.” 

Because kids have learned to trust and treasure her, they listen to Sabrina. And because of that, their lives are forever changed.

For more information about Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast, please visit www.conservationfoundation.com or call 941.918.2100.