Nurture Nature Center

Environmental literacy: at its facility in easton, nnc offers a variety of art and other exhibits and activities designed to foster dialogue about environmental issues. Nnc's permanent exhibits include noaa's acclaimed "science on a sphere," for teaching about earth and space science; an sos explorer touch screen kiosk; a large living local mural incorporating 80 environmental talking points, and an interactive watershed exhibit. In addition to these permanent exhibits, nnc holds rotating art shows on environmental themes with presentations by the artists. It also offers speaking events by educators, films, workshops, and classes on a variety of environmental topics, and maintains an urban garden that it uses for educational purposes. Outside its (continue on schedule o)facility, nnc conducts local and regional outreach in many forms, with projects designed to build resilience to environmental hazards. In 2024, nnc worked with six municipalities in the lehigh valley as part of a federally funded create resilience research and community learning hub" project and completed an exhibit of illustrative resilience maps for each municipality along with an online resource about resilience. Nnc also engaged in outreach and education for a create connections project that focused on climate action plans for easton and bethlehem; worked with college interns on additional outreach activities related to those plans; and hosted its 5th annual youth climate summit in april with over 120 students attending. Nnc held a teacher professional development workshop in june, as well, for middle school science teacher partners as part of a science and art integrated curriculum design project (federally grant funded).

Nnc administers a program known as buy fresh buy local for the lehigh valley (bfbl-glv), which is designed to educate consumers in the lehigh, northampton and berks counties about the benefits of healthy, locally-grown foods, while supporting the farmers and lands that produce them. Nnc's local foods work also seeks to improve food access for low-income neighborhoods and improve the infrastructure for the local food economy.