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Philosophy
The overall goal of the Wildwoods Foundation is to foster an urban population that is aware of, and concerned about their surrounding environment — both the natural world and their urban community — and mindful of their impact upon that environment.
Exploration
 Exploration that inspires a "fresh perspective" and a sense of awe and wonder is an essential piece of all of our programs. After all, our motto is "Building Community by Exploring Nature." This is accomplished by first developing awareness skills and putting them into practice by exploring the natural world around us. Then, once these skills are developed, they can easily be applied back in our everyday lives. As we are able to look upon the familiar (our friends, families, co-workers or neighborhood) with "new eyes" we begin to see and appreciate things unnoticed before.
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
-Chief Seattle
Systems Thinking
Employing a successful organizational development perspective used for many years in the corporate and engineering world, the Wildwoods Foundation's programs bring the framework of systems thinking to the elementary school classroom, families and friends as well as business groups. By definition, systems thinking is an understanding of the inter-relatedness of all of the components of any given group of items forming a unified whole.
 In other words, it is "big picture" thinking, understanding "cause and effect" relationships. And, as philosopher and scientist Buckminster Fuller once wrote, "There is nothing that is not a system." Therefore, this perspective can be applied in social settings (family and community, for example) just as it can be in business and science. As students develop an understanding of systems principles (or as one student phrased it "How things work"), they are able to apply those principles in a spectrum of situations and circumstances.
Inspired by the work of Fritjof Capra (author of the "Tao of Physics" and founder of the Center for Ecoliteracy), we at the Wildwoods Foundation believe that nature is the ultimate model of diversity and interconnection in a system. As individuals develop an understanding of the interdependence that occurs in nature, they are then able to identify the parallels that exist in the human community.
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