The Start of Our Journey

I have never been good at accepting "that's just how it is."

It's gotten me into trouble more than once. But it's also the reason TerraLumia Foundation exists.

It started with a simple question: where can my child go to learn outside? Not as a field trip. Not as a reward for finishing the real work. As the work. Every day, in the dirt and the rain and the remarkable, irreplaceable world that exists beyond four walls.

I went looking for that place. And I found something I wasn't expecting.

Forest schools exist. Nature-based programs exist. Beautiful ones, run by people who have given their professional lives to this work because they believe, as I do, that children are not problems to be managed into stillness and compliance. That curiosity is not a liability. That the outdoors is not a luxury or a reward, it is a classroom, a teacher, a birthright.

But the sector doing this incredible, powerful work? It's running on pennies.

Programs that deserve to grow can't. Families who want this for their children can't afford it. And here's the part that really got under my skin: many of these programs have to find creative ways to operate. Anything that challenges the status quo of education takes a tremendous amount of energy to protect and keep going. Outsiders will often stop at nothing to try to eliminate what they feel is too dangerous, too dirty, too disorganized. Not enough people will take the time to get curious, to understand why more and more families are drawn to this model of education. Not enough people are asking how can mainstream education pivot to look more like nature-based education, with its deeply proven track record of building the kind confident, creative-thinking, life-long learners our future needs. The people taking the time and energy to build these programs or quietly and subtly bring them to public schools don't have much energy left to help push this world further.

My impatience, and unwillingness to just accept the way things are, has led us here. Earth Day. It felt like the right day to make a statement.

As I started to put my plan together, I reached out to my network. Full of trepidation, impostor syndrome rearing its head, I made a simple ask. Do you believe in this and will you do this work with me? There was no hesitation. Even those that had to decline because they simply had too much on their plate (I so appreciate candor!) were sold on the vision. Once I had a few accept, I began sharing the dream with a few other trusted advisors. The response was more than I expected - overwhelming excitement, belief in the potential, and a network of connections opened up.

Our board isn't made of corporate professionals who have served on numerous boards. Our board is grass roots. We've lived it, are living it, or will be living it. For all of us, education and nature mean something. We're not experts, we're figuring it out. But we're all extremely passionate about what's needed and the impact we can have.

TerraLumia Foundation is not here to tell the world what nature-based learning is supposed to look like. Communities and cultures across the globe have always known in their own languages, through their own traditions, that children grow when they are given space and earth and time. Our job is not to define that. Our job is to resource it.

We award scholarships because tuition should not be the reason a child spends another year under fluorescent lights when there's a forest or a beach or a mangrove waiting. We provide access to gear because the hidden costs of outdoor learning are real and they add up and most people don't talk about them. And we fund programs because good work deserves real support.

TerraLumia Foundation is a secular, nonpartisan public charity. We are global. We welcome families and programs of every cultural, economic, and religious background — because children everywhere deserve to learn beneath an open sky, and we are not interested in deciding whose sky counts.

This started with one question. It will not end until every family that asks it has somewhere to go and a way to get there.

Fueled by the magic of rain and stardust,

Kelsey