Green Girls Rule! City Park Foundation Open Registration For Second Green Girls Empowered

In celebration of Earth Day

, City Parks Foundation has launched registration for the second cohort class of the CityParks Green Girls Empowered by ING Curriculum Training.

The curriculum offers educators digital access to the award-winning Green Girls STEM curriculum, which has been adapted from its local, New York City focus, to have a broader, national emphasis on climate change and environmental stewardship through experiential learning in parks and other open spaces.

The curriculum is available for use by formal and informal educators.

Training will be required and offered online in May; pre-registration is required.

The program’s first cohort session was offered in February 2021.

Awarded the inaugural Climate Change Award by the National Summer Learning Association in 2020, the Green Girls program uses experiential learning in parks, forests, and waterways to offer New York City adolescent girls after-school and summer programming that focuses on environmental science, encouraging girls to recognize their potential as scientists and stewards of natural resources.

With support from ING, the Green Girls curriculum training will be available for use free of charge, as both an after-school and a summer program.

The curriculum focuses on climate change, urban water bodies and forests, and strategies for stewarding and advocating for our essential resources.

Also integrated are youth development concepts of self and social awareness encouraging young women to build healthy relationships with each other and their mentors.

• Applications are open at cityparksfoundation.org/green-girls-training until April 29, 2021.
• Applicants will be informed of acceptance into the training program no later than May 3, 2021.
• A required training workshop will be held for participants on May 7, 2021.

Educators interested in using the digital curriculum in this pilot year will be required to participate in a two-hour online learning workshop with City Parks Foundation educators beforehand, as well as a one-on-one consulting session.

Participants will also be asked to conduct and share results from a program assessment at the end of the program year.

The training will include suggested lesson plans, tips on establishing partnerships, peer mentorship, and advocacy tools to help educators learn how to run a successful program.

Nearly 20 years ago, City Parks Foundation created Green Girls to excite young women in 6th-8th grades about STEM learning.

Nearly 20 years ago, City Parks Foundation created Green Girls to excite young women in 6th-8th grades about STEM learning.

The program transforms local public parklands, forests, and waterways into learning laboratories, as Green Girls engage in hands-on experiments and community service.

Students learn about a variety of potential careers in the sciences – an industry where over 75% of the workforce is male, and the program also facilitates social-emotional learning at this critical time in a young woman’s development, through discussions, team-building activities focused on female empowerment, individual voice, and self-awareness, aiming to foster healthy relationship development between students.

Students learn about a variety of potential careers in the sciences – an industry where over 75% of the workforce is male, and the program also facilitates social-emotional learning at this critical time in a young woman’s development, through discussions, team-building activities focused on female empowerment, individual voice, and self-awareness, aiming to foster healthy relationship development between students.

Committing to providing enriching opportunities for the Green Girls, ING will not only support the program financially but will offer mentoring workshops and career development insights for program participants.

Through one-on-one sessions with ING’s women leaders across the organization, ING aims to show program participants they can turn their passion for science, math, and the environment into a career in the emerging sustainable and green economy.

At City Parks Foundation, we are dedicated to invigorating and transforming parks into dynamic, vibrant centers of urban life through sports, arts, community building and education programs for all New Yorkers.

Our programs — located in more than 400 parks, recreation centers and public schools across New York City — reach 310,000 people each year. Our ethos is simple: thriving parks mean thriving communities.

CityParks Learn, our standards-aligned environmental education programs, helps students experience the fun of science, while learning about their relationship to the natural world and the ways in which they can protect our environment.

We provide STEM-based environmental science programs for 5,000 elementary, middle, and high school students throughout New York City, through school-day, after school, and summer programming.

Also offered are credit-bearing training and paid internships for teenagers as well as teacher training in conducting science lessons using parks as outdoor classrooms.

ING Americas is the brand name of ING’s wholesale business in the Americas region, and a part of ING Group N.V. (“ING”), a global financial services company of Dutch origin with a network spanning 40 countries.

ING has more than 54,000 employees offer financial services to customers in over 40 countries.

Sustainability forms an integral part of ING’s strategy, evidenced by ING’s ranking as Leader in the banks industry group by Sustainalytics and ‘A’ rating in MSCI’s ratings universe.

ING Group shares are included in major sustainability and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) index products of leading providers STOXX, Morningstar and FTSE Russell.

ING Americas offers a full array of wholesale financial products, such as commercial lending, corporate finance and a full range of financial markets, products and services.

Photo credit: Green girl.