Out and About Life Education Trust

Our Vision

Every New Zealand child will be connected at an early age to nature and community, so that they can develop skills and attitudes for life and learning in the 21st century and be inspired to attain a truly exceptional future

Our Purpose

We believe, and research supports, if we can provide our children with high quality nature based outdoor education programmes, these children will develop lifelong skills that will positively influence their learning outcomes, their ability to modify behaviour appropriately and improve their mental and physical health.

By assuring that our children are optimised for the challenges of life, we believe we will have a dramatic effect on reducing the incidences of many of the social issues that affect our lives in the 21st century such as our ability to learn, mental health issues, behavioural disorders and physical conditions.


Our Aims

(1) To provide opportunities for children to reach their full potential through high quality outdoor early education activities conducted both in the natural world and in local communities.

(2) To inform and educate families on the benefits of all children forming attachments to the natural world to gain the recognised long term health, social, cognitive and ecological benefits of interacting with nature. This includes the opportunities to explore challenging situations and take risk in appropriate ways.

(3) To engage communities as a whole in making the outdoors meaningful and relevant to children and families in respect to 21st century learning requirements and the achievement of a healthy way of living.

(4) To support ongoing research into the beneficial effects that an early attachment to the natural world can have on many of our modern societal problems such as depression, obesity, diabetes, ADHD, electronic addiction, and youth suicide.