SI SE PUEDE GET OUTDOORS

Article by The Buzz- Newsletter of the Sierra Club's Building Bridges to the Outdoors Youth Program

The Cesar Chavez Public Charter School in Washington, DC, just celebrated the completion of a pilot project with Sierra Club to connect Latino youth with the outdoors. On a breezy November evening, students, parents, teachers and project partners gathered at the school for a celebration of the youth outings project.

The youth outings pilot project began in May when a partnership was established between Sierra Club, League of United Latin American Citizens, National Latino Coalition on Climate Change, the National Hispanic Environmental Council, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management-Eastern States and the Cesar Chavez Middle School. Sierra Club’s Inner City Outings groups from Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD led the youth on a series of outings and overnight camping trips in the Meadowood Recreation Area and along the Appalachian Trail.

With kids today spending less and less time in the natural world, the project was designed to provide a safe opportunity for youth from the Latino community to connect with the outdoors. Many of the students had never had an opportunity to explore the great outdoors, let along go canoeing or sleep under the stars. The project supports the First Lady’s Let’s Move Outside initiative as well as the BLM’s Take it Outside program to get kids physically active in the great outdoors.

During the closing celebration, the youth had an opportunity to share their experiences with their parents. Following a slideshow highlighting the trips, one of the students, Fatima, told the crowd that for her, the Sierra Club had opened up a whole new world. Director of the Office of Youth at the Department of the Interior and granddaughter of the school’s namesake, Julie Chavez Rodriguez also shared a few words about Interior Secretary Salazar’s vision for reconnecting youth with the great outdoors and her own family’s deep connection to the land. Closing out the ceremony, a young man named Corey from the Latin American Youth Center engaged the students, their parents and all the partners in some nature-inspired Hip Hop which spoke strongly to the impacts the outdoors had on his own life.

The youth outings pilot project was just the beginning. Cesar Chavez Charter School is committed to continuing the outdoor experiences for their students and the DC ICO is establishing a new outings group to ensure the kids don’t get left inside. Several of the teachers from the school plan to take Sierra Club’s ICO training to become outings leaders themselves!