Outdoor Play Canada is proud to be among over 40 organizational signatories of the Healthy Environments for Learning Day Vision Statement for Healthy and Sustainable Child Care Environments, led by the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment and the Canadian Child Care Federation. This vision statement outlines ten core elements of healthy and sustainable child care, including the importance of ensuring that child care settings prioritize children’s access to the natural world by optimizing outdoor learning and play spaces. It is intended as a broad framework for collective efforts towards a world-class child care system in Canada that supports optimal and equitable child health and well-being for current and future generations.

“Outdoor Play Canada welcomes and supports this national Vision Statement as a framework for collective action that will guide child care settings across Canada to optimize children’s well-being. There is unequivocal evidence that children benefit from routine outdoor learning and play, and connections with nature. Investing in healthy child care settings that afford ample access to outdoor play and the natural world will benefit children today and in generations to come. This Vision Statement supports the need for jurisdictional policy amendments to allow, accommodate, facilitate and encourage outdoor play as a healthy foundational feature of child care environments and delivery systems”

Mark Tremblay, Chair, Outdoor Play Canada; Senior Scientist, CHEO Research Institute.

Read the Vision Statement here.