Education and Engagement Specialist, Grow Outdoors South Carolina

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has a longstanding commitment to expanding opportunities for children, families, and communities to access the benefits of time spent outdoors developing lasting connections with the natural world. The vast majority of children in America spend most of their daily time indoors at child care centers, schools, parks, libraries, or at home. Time in nature-based environments offers lifelong benefits to rapidly developing bodies and brains, along with a greater inclination to become nature lovers and supporters as adults. Therefore, it is critical to advance the creation, activation and stewardship of high-quality outdoor spaces that become places where children, their caretakers and families can engage with nature and the outdoors on a daily basis.

An initiative of NWF, Early Childhood Health Outdoors (ECHO) envisions a world where every young child experiences nature daily. Launched in 2017, ECHO has been working with communities throughout the United States to transform children’s daily environments by enhancing opportunities to engage meaningfully in nature. By providing a combination of thoughtful landscape design and professional development opportunities for early childhood professionals, ECHO employs a health equity model that improves access to the benefits of nature for the children and caregivers who face the greatest barriers.  In turn, naturalized play settings improve environmental health by helping to mitigate the impacts of extreme temperatures and air pollution on young children and their caregivers.

 Grow Outdoors South Carolina, a collaborative effort of the Division of Early Care and Education at the SC Department of Social Services (DSS) and the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Prevention at the SC Department of Public Health (DPH), aims to transform early childhood outdoor spaces into diverse naturalized environments that spark play and learning. To meet our shared missions, we are seeking an Education and Engagement Specialist to contribute to the application of the ECHO model through Grow Outdoors South Carolina. 

The primary roles of the Education and Engagement Specialist are to collaborate with and support the ECHO Grow Outdoors South Carolina multi-disciplinary design and engagement team, to foster greater engagement of children in outdoor learning through education, training, support, and communications. The Education and Engagement Specialist develops and implements training and professional development offerings, serves as the main point of contact for participating early childhood education centers, strengthens existing relationships and creates new partnerships, builds local and regional expertise and capacity, and provides general administrative support for events and programming.

Principal Duties (major areas of responsibility):

The Education and Engagement Specialist is responsible for:

• Developing expertise in evidence based best-practices for the design and activation of high quality outdoor play and learning environments for young children (training provided on the job) and supporting early care and education professionals in acquiring and applying this knowledge.
• Developing content for and delivering community presentations, trainings, and professional development offerings on outdoor learning for early childhood educators, caregivers, technical assistance providers and other stakeholders.
• Creating and sustaining relationships with Grow Outdoors SC existing and future child care sites, serving as their main point of contact throughout the design and engagement process.
• Working closely with the South Carolina Department of Social Services and Department of Public Health to implement the Grow Outdoors South Carolina model.
• Coordinating engagement and building new relationships with early childhood organizations and intermediaries, educators and caregivers, and community-centered organizations that elevate marginalized (e.g., Black, Indigenous, other People of Color, and/or lower income) communities.
• Assisting in building capacity for outdoor play and learning through training and coordination of professional cohorts, technical assistance networks, and collaboration with local and national ECHO partners.
• Providing administrative support for Grow Outdoors South Carolina child care sites, including technical assistance with applications, trainings, and other inquiries.
• Collaborating with ECHO’s Communications staff to support Grow Outdoors South Carolina’s education and engagement communications strategy, including developing and implementing systems for reporting, storytelling, and social media.
• Coordinating Grow Outdoors South Carolina events including volunteer work days, trainings, regional symposia and national conferences.
• Helping develop and coordinate Grow Outdoors South Carolina’s evaluation and impact strategy to share Grow Outdoors South Carolina’s range of professional development and its impact: gather data, support evaluation and analysis, and assist in reporting.
• Traveling to child care sites located throughout South Carolina to conduct site visits and trainings, collect evaluation information, and conduct site interviews
• Periodically traveling outside of South Carolina for trainings, conferences and events with the ECHO and Grow Outdoors South Carolina team.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Experience in early childhood education, project coordination, and community engagement required.
• Knowledge of early childhood systems and/or experience working in licensed child care settings preferred.
• Knowledge of South Carolina ABC Quality rating and improvement system strongly preferred.
• Experience in developing content, presentations, trainings, and an understanding of adult learning principles.
• Experience with evaluation tools, tracking data, analysis, and reporting.
• Strong organizational and time-management skills.
• Microsoft Office proficiency. Adobe Creative Suite proficiency or willingness to learn. Experience with SurveyMonkey or willingness to learn.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Ability to communicate effectively across disciplines.
• Capable of engaging and bolstering marginalized voices in your work.
• Ability to listen and respond with empathy to others’ lived experiences that may be very different than your own.
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively in a team environment, both in-person and virtually.
• Shares the values of the National Wildlife Federation: collaboration, mindfulness, empowerment, inclusivity, and mission focus.

This is a full-time, hybrid position based in Columbia, South Carolina.  The Education and Engagement Specialist will report to the Senior Director of Design and Engagement based in Denver, Colorado. The start date for this position is Winter 2025.

The hiring salary range for this position is $62,000-$68,000

We aspire to be an inclusive multicultural organization that celebrates the rich dimensions of diversity such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical ability, and religious and political belief. Diversity at the National Wildlife Federation translates into understanding and valuing each other's perspectives.

NWF Values:

Your actions are expected to reflect the staff values of the National Wildlife Federation: collaboration, mindfulness, empowerment, inclusivity, and mission focus.  Your competencies should include:

• Being motivated by values of equity and responsibility to those most marginalized;
• Consistently bringing a high level of empathy and social skills to work and interpersonal interactions;
• Being committed to deepening an environmental justice approach in policy priorities, program development and partner engagement;
• Actively seeks feedback, direction, and guidance from all team members and keeps staff informed of decisions that impact them;
• Being dedicated to advancing NWF’s internal equity transformation and compelling partners and allies to incorporate equity into their work; and
• Passion for and commitment to NWF's mission

The National Wildlife Federation offers excellent benefits, including a 16-week paid FMLA, generous leave, competitive compensation, and a family-friendly, flexible work environment. We are committed to building a complementary team and strongly support candidates from all backgrounds to apply. If you meet more than 75% of the qualifications of this description, we support your application. If selected, a background check will be conducted.