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Brandwein Institute
2015 Inspiring a New Generation Summit:
A North American Initiative
On November 6, 2015, the Brandwein Institute will convene a three-day Summit, “Inspiring a new Generation: A North American Initiative,” at the National Conservation Training Center, Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Over 200 key stakeholders will participate in the task of designing an action plan to build life-long relationships 
with nature for current and future generations. The World Parks Congress, held in 2014 in Sydney, Australia, set the stage for the Summit by focusing a major strand on Inspiring a New Generation. The 2015 Brandwein Summit will build on the issues identified by the Congress and determine specific strategies to address them.
This is an invitational conference with 225 participants. Summit organizers will cover all facility, lodging, and meal costs. Participants cover their own transportaion.
The major objectives of the 2015 Summit are
- Convene key North American stakeholders to embrace the Inspiring a New Generation Movement.
- Develop a North American Action Agenda that defines the opportunities for various stakeholders to contribute to this movement and communicate the agenda to a wide audience.
- Share innovative best practices in connecting people with nature, including engaging new partners and sectors of society that have been underrepresented in nature conservation fields.
- Identify barriers to be overcome and motivators to build lasting connections with people to nature.
- Engage young people to share knowledge, experiences, and perspectives, build capacity, take leadership, and inspire others to connect with nature through international and intergenerational partnerships.
The 2015 Summit will mark the ten-year anniversary of the Brandwein Institute’s “Conservation Learning Summit: A Re-Commitment to the Future” that brought together representatives from government and public agencies, business, academia, and philanthropy to form partnerships to re-connect youth with nature and prepare a future work force to take care of the nation’s natural resources. Also held at the National Conservation Training Center, the 2005 Summit established the groundwork and identified the audience for the upcoming Summit.
For more information, see the PowerPoint presentation about the Summit. See the Press Release announcing the Summit. See the draft document “A Strategy of innovative approaches and recommendations to inspire a new generation in the next decade,” as reported from the IUCN World Parks Conference, Sydney, Australia, 2014.