Bay Area Wilderness Training
(BAWT) is a project of the Earth Island Institute a 501(c)3 corporation
Our Mission
is to create opportunities for inner-city youth to experience wilderness first-hand.
We've reached
10 000 youth!
Big thanks to all of the youth leaders who we have supported!
Climbing for Kids
Create the chance of a lifetime for at-risk kids to experience the wilderness. Raise money and get free mountaineering gear with Climbing For Kids or Outdoor Adventures for Kids.
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Breaking the Color Barrier in the Great American Outdoors
Chelsea's Reflections on the conference in Atlanta September 23-26
The highlight was simply to go across the country and meet folks from all over who feel that it is important to increase diversity in outdoor settings.
There were representatives of all colors there from the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Student Conservation Association (SCA), Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI), and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). I represented BAWT, as well as promoting the only backpacking trip in the country for women of color through the Balances Rock Foundation. That is just to name a few of the organizations that were represented at the conference.
I described being there as walking into the Hall of Justice and seeing all of the other superheroes there. It really was!
My friend Rue Mapp talked about using social networking to get the word out, and my friend Nina Roberts talked about removing constraints and creating connections. There were several of us from the book Black and Brown Faces in America's Wild Places, including the author, Dudley Edmondson. I had the honor to meet Majora Carter (founder of a New York City environmental justice organization), Carolyn Finney (a UC Berkeley professor), and Captain Bill Pinkney (the first Afro-American to sail solo around the world), and Juan Martinez (one of the younger people there, he represented the Children and Nature Network).
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
The biggest learning that I took away from the conference is simply that exploring the topic brings stakeholders from a wide spectrum of experience and involvement. There was a family there from a reality TV show called Into the Wild, who had recently camped out for the first time and spent a couple of days in a National Park for the first time. There were also people, myself included, who have been out there for years, wondering why we were the only ones.
Some of the rookies wanted to know what to do if they felt unwelcome in outdoor places, even referencing the legacy of lynching. Having never encountered serious racial consequences of being a person of color outdoors in California, I wondered if things were different in other parts of the country. As the question came up during a panel that I co-led, my answer was that we need to take responsibility for our part in such interactions, and do what we can to limit our own reactions of fear. I talked about how fears usually seem bigger than they really are and we need to carry on, not necessarily reacting to the fear, but simply acknowledge it. As a rock climber, I have had plenty of experience of dealing with fear in different contexts and capacities.
Over all, I feel that the conference was an important step in continuing the dialogue on getting more people of color into the outdoors. We need to get outdoors just as much as anyone, and it belongs to us just as much as to anyone else.
Calendar of upcoming events:
December 16th: 3rd Wednesdays, Special Holiday Edition of Volunteer Night and Discovery Session
December 19th: Climbing for Kids Training Hike, Big Basin, CA
February 3rd: 2010 Snowshoeing Basics Classroom Session in our Oakland office. Learn to hike in the snow!
February 7th: 2010 Snowshoeing Basics ALL DAY training in Tahoe National Forest! Get outside!
Check out for new events on the bawt.org website!
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