As the conservation of and access to public lands comes under threat nationally, the Sierra Club is expanding its work locally to connect people to nature through a number of local projects. The projects span the country and focus on breaking down barriers that prevent people from experiencing the outdoors. The new partnership projects are a continuation of the Sierra Club’s work to increase equitable access to nature, and to get more people unplugged and outside.
We spoke with two of LA’s Nearby Nature leaders, Roberto Morales (National Field Organizer) and Nancy Le (LA Inspiring Connections Outdoors).
Tell us a little about your community and Nearby Nature project.
Roberto: Demographically South LA is a low-income, ethnically diverse community dealing with issues like poor air quality, water quality, lack of access to green spaces, things like that. These kids that are participating with Inspiring Connections Outdoors, it’ll be the first time outdoors for most of them. My part of the program--I’m working in the city of Pasadena with one of the high schools there. The community organization that we’re partnering with is Outward Bound Adventures--they do really great work at making sure kids of color from underserved communities are going outdoors and getting access to their public lands.
Nancy: For Nearby Nature there are two things that I really wanted to work on and develop--one is the idea of trails and service (we don’t have a lot of partnerships related to trail work) and then the other is working with the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force (a very active entity of the Sierra Club that does trail work almost every weekend in the mountains and maintains a lot of the trails that we’ve used in the last 40 years). I really wanted to get them involved with Inspiring Connections Outdoors because they’re an older group and I feel like they’re trying to bring more young people into the picture who will want to keep it going. I was interested in having them mentor or be models for the youth participants as we do trail work so I thought that would be a really great partnership. The idea is to get the youth members involved in some of our local parks.
What are the most pressing obstacles that stand in the way of outdoor access and exploration in Los Angeles?
Nancy: There are definitely a lot of factors--one of the biggest, I think, is transportation. We transport students on buses. With some of the places that we go to, there really is no way to get there by public transportation. Some people have a hard time believing this but a lot of our kids and their families take public transportation--they don’t have cars and don’t drive. Many of them live in very dense neighborhoods in Los Angeles which makes it difficult to own a car. So transportation is huge and they just don’t have that access and a lot of our parks are not accessible by public transportation. The second part is that these students aren’t out in nature very often, don’t have the knowledge about safe outdoor recreation, and just aren’t seeing themselves represented in the outdoors.
Roberto: There are a lot of barriers. As a whole, low-income communities are dealing with a lot of social justice issues so they don’t have time to go outdoors because they’re working 9 to 5, 6 or 7 days a week. It becomes really complex here in this country to go outdoors as a person of color. Low income, fear of the outdoors (parents are often afraid to let their kids go on camping trips because it is unfamiliar and because they think it is dangerous)...Part of the issue is that larger environmental organizations, until recently, have been deeply focused on connecting to these communities through conservation. For a community that is dealing with things like police brutality, some of these other issues are less of a priority.
What prompted you to pursue this project? Why is this project important to you and to your community?
Nancy: I used to be a teacher, which is how I got involved with Inspiring Connections Outdoors so I believe strongly that teachers influence youth more than anyone else because they have that daily interaction with them. That’s why Inspiring Connections Outdoors works so closely with teachers. With these youth leadership programs the teachers are part of it too--they can understand what is going on and learn along with their students so that beyond the program they can hopefully transfer that to future students. We’ve had tons of teachers who have become leaders - like me, for example.
Roberto: I’ve been working for Sierra Club as an organizer for about 3 years now. My connection to the outdoors is an interesting one. I was born in Guatemala and my dad lived by the principle of worshipping the land and growing on the land. I ended up in LA, one of the most dense cities in the country and I didn’t like it until I got involved with the public lands here and started to feel more at peace and more at home and started connecting to my roots. I realized that a lot of the youth here are not getting outdoors, are not getting access to the outdoors. I started getting more involved with the advocacy piece. My heart is in getting people and families outdoors.
Describe your Nearby Nature campaign and how it will provide access to green space and opportunities for environmental engagement in your community.
Nancy: In general with Inspiring Connections Outdoors our students are low-income youth of color across LA county. One thing that we want is to connect youth with trail work and to start stewardship by having them take ownership of the land--that’s a big component of what we’re doing. Another is youth leadership--it’s an idea that I’ve had for years but this is the first time we’re going to be able to do it. I’m working with two different high schools (STEM Academy of Hollywood and South Gate High School) and we’re taking ten students from each school and we’re doing a 3 part youth leadership training program. They will go on overnight camping trips and follow curriculum that will allow them to think about their roles outdoors and to get more comfortable outdoors.
Roberto: My role is to work with the youth that are involved with our partner organization, Outward Bound. We’re bringing them together to do training and youth development with the goal of having them be advocates for their public lands. Youth from Outward Bound don’t do much trail work and interestingly most of their outings are to national parks, away from their local land. It’s awesome that they get to go to Yosemite and places like that but they don’t get to explore much of their local lands less than an hour away. My project will be focused on the San Gabriel Mountains which is a national monument and we’re trying to make it more accessible and to let youth know that this is a place they can go. Just to get them out there...a lot of the youth live right around the mountain--it’s a bike ride away--but most of them haven’t been there.
What is your vision for how this Nearby Nature investment can create lasting impact for the communities in which you live, play and serve? How do you hope to see your community grow and change with the implementation of this project?
Nancy: These schools that have been involved with Inspiring Connections Outdoors for a while...we’ve seen--or what I feel--is that we don’t really transition students to leadership. We do day hikes, we take them out, we do service trips, but we don’t really give them the skills to do hikes on their own or to continue being involved in the outdoors. So this project will hopefully develop their outdoor leadership skills and help them understand how to organize their own outings in their families and communities.
Roberto: We are building this for the long-term. For the first time in a while we’re working with a program that is going to be intentional about identifying youth of color who want to become part of the outings leadership in the Sierra Club. That’s one of my main goals--to diversify the leadership so that in the near future we have more outings leaders who are reflective of the community they’re interacting with and more leaders who are bilingual. The next step is to invite the youth leaders’ families to participate as well and eventually we want to develop a multicultural bilingual outdoor program that the whole community can get involved with.
In what other ways is your chapter/group advancing equitable access to the outdoors?
Roberto: A local county measure passed last year--Measure A--and it is providing more funding to create and restore open spaces specifically in low-income communities. We needed the local chapter’s support and they rapidly formed the Our Parks committee which is going to advocate at the local level for open space and they’re becoming more involved in what we’re doing now.
Learn more about Sierra Club’s Nearby Nature initiative and Outdoors for All work: sc.org/nearbynature