About The Outside Foundation

The Outside Foundation was founded in 2014 with a mission to get kids outside and to preserve and protect our local environment. The Foundation seeks to develop, enhance, and expand programs directed at providing opportunities for children, and their families, to explore and develop lasting connections with our local waters and ecosystem, regardless of socioeconomic barriers.

What We Do

With the goal of fostering the development of environmental stewardship, our focus is threefold: education, involvement, and empowerment. Our programs focus on our two most valuable community resources: our children and our local environment.

We Get Kids Outside!

• Each year we provide an opportunity for over 1,000 middle public and private school students with an opportunity to kayak and explore the local salt marshes during a regular school day. Our “Kids in Kayaks” program curriculum is consistent with the State of South Carolina 7th grade environmental science learning objectives. The program provides the students with hands-on learning about the salt marsh ecosystem - during a regular school day!
• Our “Learn to Paddle Program” with our local Boys and Girls Club provides 50 or more children with an opportunity to learn to stand-up paddle boarding and kayaking skills and safety.

We Protect Our Environment

• We host litter clean-ups, an #EARTHDAYHHI event, the “Keep the Broad Creek Clean” water festival, and a Community-based Oyster Shell Recycling and Bed Restoration program. In 2023 our volunteers helped remove 1.6 tons of trash from our local waterways, parks, and beaches.
• Over the past four years, we have collected 125 tons of oyster shell from local restaurants and festivals. Our volunteers then bag the shell to create new “living shorelines” - the use of natural infrastructure to combat erosion due to sea level rise. In 2022 we placed 1,700 bags of recycled shell in two reefs along the vulnerable 18th fairway of the world-famous Harbortown Golf Links