The Challenge & The Opportunity
By Paul Sanford, AORE Board Member
As we begin the new year, I have been thinking back on the amazing experience of AORE2015. As a first year BOD member, it was a very busy week with an intense schedule of meetings, educational sessions and social events. But it was well worth it. The week was productive, inspiring and fun.
At the same time, I am also thinking about the conversations I had with a friend from the Pacific Northwest who attended the conference for the first time. My friend came to AORE2015 because he is very passionate about getting more people outdoors. He really enjoyed himself, and was inspired by the people he met. However, he rightly observed that we are not a very diverse community. He recognized this problem is not unique to AORE, but urged us to do more.
AORE members took some important steps forward in 2015. We established a Diversity and Inclusion task force and developed a D&I statement to drive our efforts to be a more welcoming association and a more inclusive community of outdoor enthusiasts. We also offered a preconference Diversity and Inclusion Workshop for AORE members.
However, we still have a long way to go, and this year's conference location was a useful reminder. Atlanta is a diverse southern city with a large African American population. As good as our conference was, it would have been better with more inclusive representation.
If AORE members were to join together and make a bigger commitment to diversity and inclusion, we would be joining a growing movement. Juan Martinez and the Natural Leaders Network are leading the way at breaking down barriers and getting more people of color outdoors. Rue Mapp started Outdoor Afro as a blog several years ago, and has inspired others to offer outdoor opportunities in cities all over the country. Juan Gonzales recently formed Latino Outdoors, and is expanding his reach across the country to provide more outdoor experiences to the Latino community.
The federal government is also getting more people outdoors. In September 2015, the Obama administration launched Every Kid in a Park, which seeks to provide every student in America with a park experience sometime during their fourth grade year, with a particular emphasis on Title I schools in underserved communities. The White House has also invited its partners in the nonprofit community to share other ideas for getting more young people outside. The President would like to make this a priority during the remainder of his time in office.
AORE members already play a critical role in this movement. We provide people with transformative experiences in the outdoors that often shape who they will be for the rest of their lives. However, we could do more. We all need to find a way to make these transformative experiences available to people that more accurately reflect the diversity of America. The future of our programs depends upon it.
We need not do this entirely on our own. Developing partnerships can be an effective strategy, too. For example, the biggest challenge for the Every Kid in a Park program is transportation. Local schools need help transporting their fourth grade classes to parks so they can have their first outdoor experiences. Some AORE member programs may be able to "adopt" a local school and help fill this need. The logistics might be tricky, but it is worth considering. Those fourth grade students may be future participants in your outdoor program.
AORE members believe in going big or going home. I encourage every AORE member to go bigger on diversity and inclusion in 2016, and help drive the community of outdoor recreation and education towards bigger and better things.
I do not have a magic formula for achieving this goal. It is a big challenge, and change will not come overnight. However, I think the first step is to own this as a problem that we all need to address, both individually and collectively. We also need to include those we are hoping to serve in the development of a strategy for being more inclusive.
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