How Can We Expand Our Constituencies and Connect with Youth??

Don’t you need to extend ownership and support for your trail beyond the choir you’ve been preaching to? This workshop will help you better understand targeted audiences such as diverse communities, families and youth, train you in communications and marketing to them, and introduce you to programs that are successfully connecting with them.

This workshop will help you:

• Comprehend the basic social dynamics unique to separate generations and develop age specific volunteer recruitment and management skills.
• Learn marketing and delivery methods for reaching youth!
• Learn of new programs to foster and extend trail resource stewardship opportunities!
• Connect with organizations -- through an Info Fair -- that are perfecting innovative education approaches nationwide!
• Connect with the successes of other National Trails organizations and build your own, tailored to your community!

The workshop includes a presentation by Roger Moore on citizen-science, an approach that shows promise for improving the health of trail resources and corridors, reaching out to new constituencies, building trail support in neighboring communities, strengthening and diversifying existing trail organizations and partners, and connecting people with nature through place-based volunteering and education. This presentation also includes examples of these efforts being established on and around trails. 

The workshop also includes presentations on risk management, on how to engage new demographics, and about creating diverse, family and youth oriented programs. Also presenting at the workshop will be Denise Meridith with a report on the Education and Outreach Task Force, Phillip Smartt discussing Generation Y, Shelva Nobles on the dynamics of the new volunteerism, and Ann Baker Easley.


Registration for the Workshop
The Workshop fee is $95 per person through October 30th. After October 30th, the fee is $125 per person.  This fee includes 2 lunches, afternoon breaks, and Thursday evening dessert.

Lodging & Travel
The Workshop is taking place at Wyndham Riverfront North Little Rock. We encourage you to make reservations early, as there are a limited number of rooms at the rates provided below.

Wyndham Riverfront North Little Rock, 2 Riverfront Place, North Little Rock, AR 72114 (501) 371-9000 
Click here for a Google map

• Courtesy shuttle to & from the airport; contact the hotel when you arrive at the Little Rock Airport for pick-up.

• Little Rock River Rail trolley stops near hotel and can take you directly to the Statehouse Convention Center, site of the National Trails Symposium.

• Mention the group name "National Trails Symposium" to get these rates.
  Single Occupancy: $82.00 per night, plus tax (11.5%) / $10.00 each additional person. (This is the same rate as the government per diem rate and is available to all guests attending the National Trails Symposium)

• The designated cut-off date for these rates is October 25, 2008. Rates are good from November 13-19, 2008.

For information on other National Trails Symposium host hotels in Little Rock, go to http://www.americantrails.org/2008/hotel.html 

For information on traveling to Little Rock, go to http://www.americantrails.org/2008/travel.html