Alder Creek Children’s Forest (ACCF), a charitable nonprofit organization, serves two of Oregon’s greatest treasures: our youth and our natural resources.  We offer a place, partnerships, and programs designed for young citizens to learn to work together to create healthy, sustainable forests, watersheds, and communities. 

• ACCF’s place is an 80 acre mixed-coniferous forest located one mile west of Canyonville in south Douglas County, and situated in the 2500 acre Alder-Jordan Creek watershed. Our forest and watershed learning activities are supplemented by an online interface, including a GIS and course management system.
• Our partnership network provides connections with other students and educators, community volunteers, technical and educational specialists, and private and public organizations, offering diverse resources, perspectives, and expertise.
• Our educational programs stress an experiential “open DORE” approach in which students Do projects, Observe the results of their activities, Relate their observations to others’ observations and then Experiment anew.  Students practice this approach by participating in the planning and management of our forest and watershed.
• Young citizens are our primary audience, especially those from south Douglas County.  What we offer prepares youth to meet school requirements while playing an informed role as public citizens in natural resource decisions now and in future.
• We stress learning to work together, emphasizing civil communications among our youth and partners, and creating collaborative solutions to natural resource issues.
• The terms healthy and sustainable reflect broadly supported yet complex goals of natural resource management in the United States.  Examples include the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative, and the State of Oregon’s Sustainability Initiative to harmonize ecological, economic, and social needs.
• The threefold focus on forests, watersheds, and communities suggests our stress on context: we treat forests as situated in watersheds, and watersheds as situated amidst the communities that depend on them.