There is a World to Explore. House of Jimmu is actively campaign cities, schools, cultural institutions, and media to raise awareness and promote outside playtime.
In recent years, Natural Deficit Disorder is a term that has been getting more and more attention. A series of factors have led children to drastically stop playing outside and not visit the woods. Even thought the studies are few, the numbers are evident*:
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•From 1997 to 2003, there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children 9 to 12 who spent time in outside activities. Hofferth reports that children’s free play and discretionary time declined more than seven hours a week from 1981 to 1997 and an additional two hours from 1997 to 2003, a total of nine hours less a week of time over a 25-year. Compare to more than 45 hours a week children spent with Electronic Media.
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•Only 6 percent of children, ages 9 to 13, play outside on their own
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•90 percent of inner-city kids do not know how to swim;
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•34 percent have never been to the beach.
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•In Holland, Michigan, some young people who come to the Outdoor Discovery Center for education-based outings in the out-of-doors have collapsed into tears because they are afraid of the woods, and they cannot walk more than a few hundred yards before they are exhausted by the expenditure of physical energy.
Spending time in nature as always been more than animals and plants. There is a learning of exploration, discovery, and adventure, essential in building life survival skills, that now have become absent in children’s upbringing. Some go as far at to say that this green deficit is at the root of ADD, Obesity, Stress and much more.
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