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Our Mission
Helping children understand and value our natural world.
Our Vision
A generation of children who value the natural world and take an active role in its protection.
Why Our Work Matters
Common sense–and a growing body of scientific research–shows that time spent in nature is essential to healthy child development. Studies consistently demonstrate that children who play and learn outdoors tend to be healthier, less anxious, more resilient, and more cooperative than children who spend most of their free time indoors, focused on screens. Yet despite understanding these benefits, many parents struggle to get their children outside. Increasing urbanization has created communities with more pavement than grass and more streetlights than trees, making access to nature increasingly limited.
Splash was founded in 1999 by Eva Butler, a biologist and passionate advocate for the natural world. She recognized that when hands-on science education is paired with meaningful outdoor experiences, children become informed and inspired to protect water resources and local habitats. Eva developed the Splash Elementary Curriculum (2000), which has been updated and refined repeatedly over the past two decades, ensuring it remains engaging, relevant, and scientifically sound.
For 26 years, Splash has partnered with municipalities to provide community outreach on the importance of Stormwater Pollution Prevention. During this time the organization has connected more than 239,000 students with nature–often offering their first real outdoor learning experience. Splash has also trained more than 530 teachers on how to make science enjoyable, meaningful, and curiostiy-driven.
The health of our environment depends on raising a generation that understands and values our natural world. At Splash we believe that people value what they understand and protect what they value. The experiences we create leave lasting impressions, inspiring students to see themselves as stewards of their environment. Many former program participants have returned to tell us that their first connection with Splash played a pivotal role in their decision to pursue a career in science.
OUR STRATEGY
Splash believes that every child should be able to have an experience in nature during each grade throughout their TK-12 public schooling. To reach this goal will take the collaboration of every Environmental Education nonprofit in the region. Splash has begun spearheading this effort by partnering with two California Statewide initiatives.
The California Campaign for Outdoor Learning, led by Ten Strands, is a statewide effort to make outdoor learning a routine, supported part of every student’s education. Today, access to learning outdoors depends too much on where a child happens to go to school, and the students with the least access to nature are often the ones who would benefit most. The Campaign’s goal is for students to spend 20–25% of their learning time outdoors, during the school day and in expanded learning programs, on school campuses, in local green spaces, on field trips, and at residential outdoor schools.
The Campaign grew out of conversations with more than 30 leaders across education, expanded learning, public health, research, equity in the outdoors, and philanthropy. It is built on four interconnected strategies. It lifts up schools where outdoor learning is already thriving as models of what is possible. It gathers research on the benefits of outdoor learning for students’ health and learning. It communicates the case for outdoor learning to educators, policymakers, and the public. And it advocates for state policy that makes outdoor learning a supported part of every school day.
Splash is proud to be a member of the Campaign coalition and to have played a direct role in its advocacy work. The Campaign sponsored AB 2158, the Outdoor Learning and Environmental Literacy Act of 2026, and Splash’s CEO, Mackenzie Wieser, secured Assemblymember Josh Hoover’s commitment to author the bill. AB 2158 passed the Assembly 77-0, earned unanimous support in every committee that heard it before reaching Senate Appropriations, and drew more than 700 supporters across California. It was held in the Appropriations Committee and will not move forward this year, but that momentum built a strong statewide coalition.
The Campaign is now developing guidance to help schools implement outdoor learning so the field is ready when the next legislative session begins. Organizations like Splash are essential to this work because we are already bringing students outdoors every day, and we can help schools and districts turn outdoor learning from an occasional experience into a regular part of how students learn.
The California Environmental Literacy Initiative (CAELI), led by Ten Strands, works statewide with guidance from a leadership council, to create systematic change in support of environmental literacy with a focus on access, equity, and cultural relevance for all students.
In 2015, the California Department of Education, working with a 48-member Environmental Literacy Taskforce, published California’s Blueprint for Environmental Literacy which aims to:
- Create a supportive statewide context for environmental literacy.
- Infuse environment-based learning throughout the K–12 public education system.
- Support districts and counties who are embracing environmental literacy to meet district goals.
- Build the network of Community Based Partners who are brining students into the outdoors and connecting them to environmental principles and concepts through building experiences in nature.
Splash has been asked to join the new Community Based Partnership Hub, created by CAELI. Mackenzie Wieser, Splash’s CEO, is the Co-Chair of this Innovation Hub and is now a part of the CAELI Executive Committee. The Hub’s work centers on ensuring that Environmental Education nonprofits like Splash are at the policy table and can begin to advocate for both dollars and policies that drive greater impact within the state.
Mather Field
Vernal pools were once common in the grasslands around Sacramento, especially in the vicinity of Mather Field. The vast majority of pools have since disappeared under the plow or in the wake of expanding urban development. Experts estimate that we now see fewer than 10% of the vernal pools that existed in California in John Sutter’s time.
As late as 1869, when John Muir began writing his glowing essays on California, he had this to say:
“The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step… The radiant honey-full corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another, glowed in the living light like a sunset sky – one sheet of purple and gold.”
A portion of the Mather Field vernal pools escaped destruction and stand as a testimony to the truth of his words. Throughout most of the 20th century they were protected from encroaching urban development by the fences of the Air Force Base. Although many acres of vernal pools were destroyed during 80 years of Air Force occupation, those that remain constitute over ten percent of all the vernal pools left within the Sacramento County Urban Services Boundary and are now protected in the Illa Collin Conservation Preserve.
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