Inner-City Scholarship Fund

Since 2008, the FRNC has partnered with the Inner-City Scholarship Fund (ICSF) to make environmental education and access to a nature a reality for children living in economically challenged households in New York City.

The result of this partnership is that children from East Harlem and the Bronx are given an opportunity to escape the city and spend one week of summer camp at the Rye Nature Center. For most of the students that attend this program, it is their first experience in a forest or in a large natural area. An FRNC Naturalist leads each of the camp groups and creates a variety of hands-on science and ecology lessons that are age appropriate and keep the kids moving outside, exploring the 47 acres of the City’s forest.

Over the course of two years, the FRNC has been able to expand the program significantly. In the summer of 2010, the FRNC was able to bring nearly 100 students from the Inner-City Scholarship Fund to the Rye Nature Center over the course of two weeks in August. Since the inception of the program, the FRNC has raised funds to bring over 400 children from the city to experience summer camp in a nature sanctuary. In 2013, after the Nature Center’s public camp closes, the FRNC plan to bring another 100 students to the Nature Center for summer camp over the course of two weeks.

Last year, over 100 generous families supported this program by donating money, snacks, and other program resources to the FRNC. Help us keep a good thing going. Donate today.

Call 914.967.5150 for more information, or easily donate online here: