Immigrants, refugees, and communities of color experience disparities to accessing green and open spaces due to barriers of money, knowledge, language, and more. At the same time, these communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental health risks and the areas they live and work show some of the greatest opportunity for more equitable access to the benefits of green and open spaces.
Building on the success of our New Arrivals program, the Outdoor Leadership Empowerment program deepens the focus on building capacity in immigrant and refugee communities for connecting with nature in ways that align with their cultural and community needs. Each 12-month cycle of the leadership program contains the following components.
- Community Listening Sessions & Interviews: We invite immigrant and refugee communities to voice topics of interest, barriers to overcome, and leadership qualities they hope for around outdoor activities. These sessions inform the workshops and trips that the program offers. This feedback can also be directed to local and regional government leadership to inform their future programming.
- Community Leader Cohorts: Each year, we anticipate recruiting 3-5 community members who wish to develop outdoors leadership skills. These emerging community leaders work with ECOSS to build their leadership capacity through workshops and lead at least one outdoor activity for their community.
- Outdoors Workshops: 3-5 workshops develop the skills and knowledge of the community leader cohorts. Topics may include tide pooling, camping, water sports, snowshoeing, foraging, forest bathing, and overcoming transportation barriers.
- Graduation Trips: To graduate from the OLE program, community leaders will coordinate and facilitate an outdoor activity with their community that centers their needs and interests.
- Post-graduation Resourcing: After a cohort graduates, we continue supporting them by offering opportunities to check in, celebrate accomplishments, and collaborate on overcoming challenges. Additionally, we strive to provide seed funding for community leaders to resource their communities in engaging outdoors.
- Reflections: Program participants and staff reflect on the program activities in feedback sessions that allow us to evaluate and adapt the program, as well as pass on relevant feedback to local/regional government leaders to advocate for equitable parks access.
The Outdoors Leadership Empowerment program advances public access to recreation, parks, and open spaces for immigrants and refugees by placing the design of outdoor activities in their hands, building leadership capacity, and resourcing immigrants, refugees, and BIPOC communities to engage more deeply around parks and other green, open spaces. The program thus promoted safe community spaces in nature for healing and community building, ultimately reducing disparities that immigrants, refugees, and communities of color face in accessing the physical, mental, and emotional health benefits of open, green spaces.
ECOSS began piloting this program in 2023 and 2024, with leaders from the Latinx, Vietnamese, and African immigrant communities. In 2025 and beyond, we hope to expand the program and our capacity to resource community leaders after they graduate from our outdoor leadership empowerment program.
Programs like Outdoor Leadership Empowerment expand frontline communities’ capacity to connect in nature. Make a gift to ECOSS to help our work grow!