Hitchcock Center for the Environment

We envision a world where people, communities, and ecosystems thrive. The Hitchcock Center for the Environment, founded in 1962, is an organization in Amherst, Mass whose mission is to educate and inspire action for a healthy planet. Our programs for children, youth, and families are designed to use the study of science and nature as a means to provide creative inspiration to solve human problems sustainably. Our programs serve to develop a continuum of competencies that begin at the earliest, most formative years and progress through a process of lifelong learning to engender a greater understanding of the interdependence of the environment, economy, and social issues. Our approach to education uses the environment as a classroom and defines place at a variety of scales - the schoolyard, the backyard, the neighborhood, the park, the farm, the town, the forest, the pond, the mountains, and the watershed. In these settings, the Hitchcock Center helps thousands of children, youth, and families see and understand the impacts of our actions.