CNIT 2025 Impact Review: Growing Reach, Deepening Roots

Growing Reach, Deepening Roots: CNIT's 2025 Impact Review. Photo by Payton Pan

2025 was a year of steady roots and meaningful expansion for the Center for Nature-Informed Therapy. We strengthened our organizational foundation, grew our presence beyond Maryland, and continued building the field with embodied, evidence-informed training and accessible public programs.

From training Ukrainian park rangers and botanical garden staff in Hungary to supporting local communities through partnerships across Maryland, this year affirmed what we believe at our core: nature-informed care is not a luxury—it is a vital pathway toward resilience, regulation, and restored connection.

Strengthening the Foundation

One of our biggest milestones this year was receiving our IRS determination letter more than six months after submitting our application. This achievement marks an important step in solidifying CNIT’s long-term credibility and capacity—supporting our ability to grow partnerships, deepen research, and increase access through scholarships and public programming.

Global Mission in Action

Ukrainian park rangers and botanical garden staff receive Nature-Informed Therapy training in Hortobágy, Hungary—bringing trauma-informed, nature-based tools back to their communities.

This spring, our team traveled to Hortobágy, Hungary to train Ukrainian park rangers and botanical garden staff in Nature-Informed Therapy. These practitioners are now equipped with trauma-informed, nature-based tools to support war-related stress and community healing. This work reflects CNIT’s commitment to bringing grounded, culturally sensitive, and relational approaches to those facing extraordinary stress and loss.

Growing the Evidence Base

We also celebrated the publication of a peer-reviewed article based on our 6-week Nature Therapy for Wellness Program. This is an encouraging marker for the field—and for CNIT’s role within it—demonstrating that nature-informed approaches can be both deeply human and increasingly measurable in ways that expand legitimacy and impact.

Expanding Training Reach

2025 was a year of powerful learning experiences. We welcomed close to 500 people through our training programs and expanded our reach beyond Maryland with a highly successful Foundational Training in Salt Lake City.

Alongside three foundational trainings, we offered seven advanced trainings that continued strengthening the field with practical, embodied, evidence-informed approaches:

• Eco-Anxiety

• Nature-Based IFS

• Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress

• Backpacking Grief Training

• Grief and Nature

• Body Image & Nature

• Eco-Art Intervention

We also brought our foundational training and Nature Therapy Group curriculum training into addiction centers and the Anne Arundel County public school system—supporting the integration of nature-informed practices into institutions serving high-need communities.

Innovation Through Immersive Learning

A quiet learning circle on the beach during Taming the Anxious Brain—with Nature in Mind in Stone Harbor—where neuroscience meets coastal restoration and embodied practice.

This year, we launched a new advanced training and retreat hybrid in Stone Harbor—Taming the Anxious Brain—with Nature in Mind. This experience brought together science, nervous system healing, and immersive coastal restoration in a format designed for deep integration: learning that is not only intellectual, but lived.

Community Partnerships and Public Access

CNIT partnered with MedStar Harbor Hospital, Enoch Pratt Library System, University of Maryland, Ladew Gardens, BCPL, and one Baltimore inner city school to bring accessible nature-based grounding and regulation practices to their communities during a challenging year. Approximately 150 people benefited from these community-based offerings.

A moment of connection and calming presence during CNIT’s Nature Therapy for Wellbeing group in partnership with the Enoch Pratt Library.

Our public nature programs also remained a welcoming doorway into the work for people across experience levels and backgrounds:

• Nature Therapy for Wellbeing group

• Intro to Backpacking

• Peace in the Wild Retreat

Access, Equity, and Recognition

Thanks to donors and supporters, we awarded over $14,000 in scholarships—helping reduce financial barriers for trainees and expanding who gets to carry this work forward.

We also presented our first Trailblazer Award to honor nature-inspired innovation in mental health. This new tradition celebrates the leaders and creators helping shape the future of the field, and it reflects CNIT’s growing commitment to both recognition and field-building.

Looking Ahead

This year reminded us that nature-informed care is not a luxury; it is a vital pathway toward resilience, meaning, and belonging.

As we move into 2026, our focus is simple and steady: deepen, not just grow. We’ll be expanding the kinds of training we offer—developing new advanced topics, refining existing modules, and bringing more customized trainings directly into organizations. This includes tailored Nature-Informed Therapy foundations, advanced specialty topics, and curriculum trainings (such as our Nature Therapy Group curriculum) designed to help schools, hospitals, community programs, and agencies integrate nature-informed care into their everyday work.—building more place-based offerings while staying rooted in the core of our work: relationship with land, nervous system, and community.

We are committed to strengthening the evidence base for nature-informed care through ongoing research collaborations and more consistent program evaluation. This includes refining tools like our Nature-Informed Biopsychosocial-Spiritual Model (NIBSMA) and making it easier for practitioners to measure impact in the real-world settings where they work.

Access and equity will remain at the heart of our mission. As individual donations and major gifts grow, we hope to steadily increase both the number and size of scholarships—prioritizing people with financial need and practitioners serving under-resourced communities. When grant funding is available, we will also offer more comprehensive training scholarships that include the post-training mentorship required for certification, in exchange for a commitment to lead small, community-based nature programs. In this way, each scholarship not only supports one practitioner, but multiplies the impact of their training across the broader public.

Underneath all of this is a larger hope: that nature-informed care becomes a recognized, respected part of how we respond to anxiety, grief, trauma, and burnout—in clinics, classrooms, workplaces, parks, and beyond. Your partnership helps make that future possible.

Thank you for walking alongside us in 2025. We can’t wait to grow this work with you in 2026.

If you’d like to support what comes next, your gift helps expand scholarships, strengthen research, and bring nature-informed care to communities who need it most.