Online and Virtual Programs

Project U.S.E. is working with a number of our current school and community partners to develop online and virtual programs in order to continue providing high quality environmental and experiential education courses to the students we serve.  These courses are designed to incorporate the same team building exercises, initiative games, small group activities, and small group debriefing that make our outdoor programs so successful in community building and helping students to improve their leadership and communication skills.

We have pre-designed activities and virtual programming to use with participants of different ages, and are also able to develop customized workshops and programs for organizations depending on their needs.  We’re more than happy to work with schools, non-profits, companies, colleges and universities, and other organizations who are looking to provide a unique, memorable community building experience for remote teams or students and employees working from home.  While COVID-19 has presented challenges to many organizations, our virtual programs can help your organization continue to stay connected, build a sense of community, and offer the benefits of social-emotional learning to students, staff members, board members, and other important stakeholders.

A few examples of the types of online programs we developed during Summer 2020 include:

• Online scavenger hunt workshops and programs that can be focused on any number of different subject areas – outdoor exploration, music, geography, program or campus orientations, community gardening, nutrition, and environmental justice are just a few of the available options.  These types of activities are perfect for staff training, student or staff orientations, retreats, or elective programming/classes for schools.
• Virtual sessions focused on small group learning combined with independent activities that participants can engage in individually for continued learning.  As an example, our Pedal Farmers program operated this summer with a modified program model combining online and virtual sessions for community gardening with hands-on student activities that participants will engage in with gardening kits that will be delivered to them.  Using material kits delivered to them, students safely participated in virtual lessons via Zoom but also had the benefit of connecting with peers in real-time and getting a chance to still engage in hands-on learning activities to learn new skills like gardening and bike repair.

We’ve successfully worked with a wide range of organizations to provide virtual programming, including:

• Big Brothers Big Sisters of Essex, Hudson, and Union Counties
• LINK Community Charter School
• Our Lady of Help Christian School
• FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology)
• The Pennington School
• NJ LEEP (New Jersey Law and Education Empowerment Project)

Hear how Project U.S.E. worked closely with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Essex, Hudson, and Union Counties to help them develop creative, innovative virtual programming to the communities they serve during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Screenshot of a Virtual Scavenger Hunt Activity