Welcome WildSiders!

We are so excited you decided to join the WildSides team on this journey. Together we can work to change the way the world approaches conflict AND common ground. Our projects are YOUR projects.

Our dream: to provide more understanding of each other and nature. We do this through in-depth coverage of differing perspectives, policy, science, economics and more by using film, podcasts, social media, educational resources and other multimedia content. We have two main avenues for our work: 1) issues surrounding humans and wildlife, and 2) to empower people to use storytelling for building collaboration, solutions and understanding.

Humans and Wildlife:

We start with either a human-wildlife conflict issue or a human-wildlife common ground issue. A conflict issue can be when humans disagree over the conservation of a particular wildlife species. A common ground issue is when humans and wildlife share something in common. 

We journey through these issues together by providing you with the stories, depth and detail YOU want. We all become more engaged with topics when they are attached to stories, true stories. So we take a storytelling approach to describe a conflict or common ground issue, celebrate our differences, highlight our similarities, explore differing perspectives and wade through relevant data and information. But we want to give YOU a voice and a window into the process.

Storytelling:

We help others use storytelling to address issues involving disagreement or conflict, to build understanding about different stakeholders’ perspectives in order to build agreement or disagree more productively, for team building within organizations or communities, and to empower our youth to lead us into a more understanding future.

WildSides Youth Storytellers for Empowerment (WYSE) uses storytelling to teach children communication skills, build literacy, breed confidence and foster empathy. These skills will facilitate writing, public speaking, interpersonal communication, and future interviews for college or jobs. Perhaps most importantly, we teach our youth how to ask questions, find other people’s stories and then tell their stories. This helps them share experiences and build interest in learning other people’s stories and perspectives.

Here We Go!

Welcome to a movement through which we can build understanding of differing perspectives, learn to disagree better, and explore and experience human-wildlife conflict and common ground like never before. This new adventure will be fun, educational, challenging and unique.

Search around the website, check out our amazing people and see how you can get involved. Are you ready? I am. Let's do this!

Best Always,

Jeff 

Join us in this adventure, take part in the projects directly and be part of the WildSides team!

Connect to receive updates, invitations and opportunities. Tell us what you want to see!

Donate to get behind-the-scenes access to strategy sessions, pre-release video and more!

What is WildSides?

We'll give you the full description below. In a nutshell, WildSides is an award-winning non-profit multimedia organization. Our purpose is to create, educate and empower. We create educational, documentary and journalistic multimedia projects (like films, podcasts, motion graphics and other media) to educate all of us in an engaging and entertaining way in order to empower everyone to make more informed decisions.

 

WildSides' mission is to celebrate our differences while highlighting our similarities because we believe that when we start from a more understanding place, we can agree or disagree in a more civil and productive manner. 

 

Now here's the longer technical explanation: WildSides is an award-winning 501(c)(3) non-profit multimedia organization that films and produces stories, provides information, creates multimedia educational and documentary products that drive awareness, and offers a means for collaboration and understanding regarding human-wildlife interaction, conflict and common ground. Our goal is to provide the most depth possible about the conflicts and issues we cover, engage the public, celebrate our differences and highlight similarities among stakeholders on different sides of the issues in order to foster understanding of opposing viewpoints. We hope our efforts will provide a place for proactive discussion about solutions, collaboration and compromise.

How do we do this?

  • Identify the conflict or common ground issue.

  • Engage the public.

  • Present the issue.

  • Allow those impacted to explain the issue in their own words.

  • Delve into lives of people on different sides of the issue to create human connections across conflict.

  • Gather and provide myriad resources relevant to human-wildlife conflict and common ground, as well as other topics relevant to the personal stories of the people we film.

  • Encourage everyone to experience the lives of other people through storytelling.

  • Celebrate our differences.

  • Highlight our similarities.

  • Offer collaborative space for discussion about solutions.

  • Finally, we encourage others to provide data and information, speak directly with us, share their thoughts and ideas, and take an active role in helping us tell these stories

Scroll down to meet some of our team