Enrolling with Equity in Mind

Learning

Enrolling with Equity in Mind

Whether your program has a waitlist or you’re working to get new families in the door, how to streamline your enrollment process and ensure it’s meeting the needs of ALL families in your community is an important consideration for every program. 
 
Natural Start invited Sarah Heller, co-founder and former director of Fiddleheads Forest School, to share the process she developed at Fiddleheads to enroll families with equity in mind. Sarah has spent the last two years learning about enrollment practices and asking questions with the goal of learning how to build more equitable systems and reduce barriers to accessing nature-based education. She will describe her process for designing and implementing a weighted lottery system for enrolling families in Fiddleheads Forest School. She by no-means has all the answers, just some ideas and big questions to begin unpacking the ways bias and barriers show up in how we select and enroll families. 
 
What are your questions about enrollment? What strategies have you used to enroll children in your program? What barriers are you running into and where do you need support? Come with your stories, questions, and strategies as we discuss enrollment processes that center equity. We want to hear from you! 
 
Join the discussion on Thursday, November 18th at 2 PM EDT // 11 AM PDT. 
 
The forum is free and open to all. Pre-registration is required. A recording of the forum will be shared at naturalstart.org following the live event.