(traffic sounds)
(distant voices, hammering)
- This is Coomey Homes and my name is Raphael,
and this is my friend Trey and this is my little cousin "T".
- NARRATOR: Environment is a major influence in the
development of any child.
And for children growing up in the inner city,
that environment can be a hostile one.
This is Houston's Third Ward, a neighborhood struggling
to recapture better days.
The community's landscape is marked with both poverty...
- Inside of every seed is a living plant.
- NARRATOR: ...and hope.
- We're making a place where students and nature
can come together and enjoy each other.
If we planted this tree wrong, it would never grow
the way it should.
- NARRATOR: Glenn Miller and Leatrice Greenwood operate
the Outdoor Heritage Learning Center.
It's headquartered at Blackshear Elementary,
and is funded entirely by donations and grants.
- ALL: One, two, three.
Great.
- Why operate in Third Ward.
Third Ward is probably one of the farthest places
away from nature.
And I said, "That's exactly where we need to take nature."
Is take it back to the inner city.
We should teach them about what is most accessible to them.
Where they are.
- There's nature all around you.
You don't have to necessarily go to the forest
or go to the woods.
You can find signs of nature all around you.
- GLENN: Just hold it with your hands.
There you go, it won't hurt.
Just don't be afraid of him, that's the main thing.
What do you think these are?
- STUDENTS: Antennas.
- GLENN: Antennas, correct.
- Ouch!
- GLENN: Do you have any of those where you live?
- A lot of them in the ditch.
- Watch, when he gets to the deeper grass,
he'll probably stop, for a while.
To have the opportunity to become rich in the
interactions with other living creatures.
To learn from them the necessary will to survive under difficult
circumstances such as those that poverty creates.
I do look to outdoor heritage and nature education as being
a part of the answer for some of the urban blight.
(kids playing)
- NARRATOR: This is Coomey Homes, a 550-unit
housing project a few blocks from Blackshear Elementary.
- WOMAN: OK, ladies, let's get in there and get this tent up.
- NARRATOR: Today, some of the mothers are learning
how to set up a tent.
- WOMAN: Lift this part up.
- Oh, OK.
- NARRATOR: They're getting ready to take their kids
on their first camping trip.
- LEATRICE: Nature is something that has no guidelines
on economic standards.
There are no exclusions.
Everyone can take and partake of nature.
(children moan)
- I want to learn so much until I can be able
to achieve the outdoor going of my own,
not just with everyone else.
- With all the things that are going on with children today.
Whether it's drugs and things of that nature, it gives them
a different outlook.
Another direction to go in.
- GUIDE: Alright, how about this.
Who'd like to touch this.
(kids laugh)
- NARRATOR: Today the kids are on a field trip to a
nearby state park.
Most of these children will touch the scales of a fish
for the very first time.
(water dripping, fish flopping)
- Oh, God.
- That dumb trout.
- These are the worms we use.
- The kids have not been exposed to anything but the ghetto.
Straight up, ghetto life.
Fighting, scrapping, you know.
Arguing all the time.
- Them things going to stick me.
- GUIDE: No, they aren't, no they aren't.
- There you go, alright.
Yes.
- GUIDE: Now just go take him over to the water.
Wooow, there you go.
- I want to catch another.
- OK, let's do it.
- Who got another one?
- Look at the size of this humongous thing!
- Ooooh...
nature.
Nature.
(birds calling)
- GLENN: Take a look at all that forest.
There's 700 acres out there.
700 acres.
That's a lot of land.
You're the ones who will inherit this.
You're the ones who must care for it.
Learn about it.
You become stewards of all this.
- NARRATOR: Here in Texas, the vast majority of our children
live in the cities.
What's troubling is that most of these kids grow up with
little or no contact with the natural world.
- He's looking at us.
There go a big one, mama.
A big one.
- I see his head.
See his head.
- His head.
- There's an alligator right there.
- I go down there?
I go down there?
- GLENN: No, you can't go down there.
He's right there on the bank.
- NARRATOR: It's easy to get kids excited
when they're on a field trip.
(school bell)
The challenge is to encourage them to find nature in their
own community, like 12 year-old Terrance Edwards,
who has discovered bird watching.
- TERRANCE: Abduct.
- LEATRICE: Abundant.
- Abundant in New England.
Feeds on, grows on, are...
- No, let's start again.
Start from that sentence.
- Feeds on ground.
- Yes.
- NARRATOR: With the help of Ms. Greenwood,
he's improving his reading skills.
- Ooooh!!!
- LEATRICE: That tells you the sound that they make.
- So that's how I know.
- So that you can identify them by their what?
- Whistle!
- Correct.
- NARRATOR: What's most impressive about Terrance
is that he's taken bird watching out of the classroom
and into his Third Ward neighborhood.
- Some people just hate wild animals.
All they should do is just watch them and see how they play.
- NARRATOR: Each day after school, Terrance quietly
watches the world around him.
- You see that bird right over there?
That red bird?
That's a Red Cardinal.
Right here on the fence.
- NARRATOR: This is Terrance's sanctuary -
a vacant abandoned lot across the street from his house.
- People ought to watch and admire the animals
that they see.
Then they can learn more about them.
Even here in the city, you see, raccoons they could be out here
in your trash.
- NARRATOR: Terrance has learned the lessons can be very simple.
To see things other people don't.
And to understand nature is close by,
no matter where we are.
- I think that's a Blue Jay.
- NARRATOR: For every child like Terrance, for every neighborhood
like the Third Ward, there is a richness, a natural heritage,
waiting to be discovered.
The problem is there aren't enough people to reach out
and develop that potential.
- GLENN: Cause my park is your park and your park is my park.
You feel worse by doing nothing, and that's really feeling bad.
Is when you know there is something you can contribute,
and you don't.
(all singing) The more we work together, the happier we'll be.
Cause your park is my park and my park is your park.
The more we work together the happier we'll be.