We’re excited to welcome the 2024 Youth Access to Nature Fund cohort to the Justice Outside community. We’re grateful for your work and partnership and look forward to continued impact and community building with you.
Abundant Beginnings
Abundant Beginnings, as a Queer, Black-led decolonial community organization, is dedicated to centering socially marginalized youth and their families. The organization aims to equip children with the skills, experiences, and confidence to thrive through programs like Abundant Summer Camps, Forest Freedom School, and Abundant Activism. By intentionally centering outdoor education and incorporating ancestral practices, Abundant Beginnings seeks to address the historical disenfranchisement of marginalized communities from outdoor spaces while fostering a sense of empowerment and social justice.
Bay Area Wilderness Training
The mission of Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) is to create equitable access to the outdoors for low-income youth and youth of color. By providing essential wilderness training and free outdoor gear, BAWT is connecting thousands of Bay Area youth and educators to nature each year. BAWT is working towards a future led by social and environmental leaders inspired by meaningful experiences in nature and reflects the diversity of our community.
You can follow them on Instagram.
Camp Phoenix
Camp Phoenix provides transformative outdoor experiences for youth from low-income communities in the Bay Area. Our programs, including a 10-day summer camp and year-round excursions, focus on building resilience, leadership, and environmental stewardship. Guided by a youth-led approach, we create a supportive community where participants develop the confidence and skills needed to overcome challenges and thrive in their environments. Our work is driven by a commitment to equity, inclusion, and the belief that every young person deserves the opportunity to connect with nature and realize their full potential.
GirlVentures
GirlVentures inspires girls and gender expansive youth to lead through outdoor adventure, inner discovery, and collective action. The only nonprofit of its kind, GirlVentures combines outdoor adventure with social emotional learning for adolescent youth at a critical time in their lives.
Infinite Learning and Resource Center
Infinite Learning and Resource Center’s Nuestras Raices! program will be a new experience for many youths of color in Sonoma County, especially youth that have had encounters with the juvenile system or their parents were formerly incarcerated. The objective is to expose youth to nature/the outdoors, create a space that is safe and promote healthy ways to deal with their current circumstances, connect to the land, support the outdoors as a source of mental health and re-introduction to the community and land.
You can follow them on Instagram.
Leaders for Environmental Activism Reclaiming Their Health
Leaders4EARTH was born from the passion of youth in Salinas Valley, California, dedicated to environmental education, youth leadership, and community health through our Environmental Justice Youth Leadership Academies. By harnessing the power of youth-led participatory action research, we drive meaningful change in our communities. Now expanding into San Francisco and the greater Bay Area, we engage youth through outdoor adventures, leadership development, and educational programs. Our mission is to inspire deep connections with nature, promote holistic wellness, and empower the next generation of environmental and community leaders to make lasting impact.
Sama Sama Cooperative
Sama Sama Summer Camp is an outdoor day camp for children ages 5-14 years-old. Located in the East Bay, the camp aims to provide youth a fun, engaging and critical way of exploring the intersections of culture, arts, and ecology. With Filipino language exposure, indigenous music, dance, martial arts and exploration of our ecological heritage, Sama Sama is a summer camp experience unlike any other.
Nature Education Wellness Together (NEWT) Student Environmental Resource Center
The Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC)’s Nature Education & Wellness Together (NEWT) Program, is working to transform the landscape of outdoor education and recreation at UC Berkeley and is dedicated to holding space for marginalized communities to safely, mindfully, and joyfully access the abundant benefits that nature and outdoor activities provide by breaking the barriers that have historically made outdoor enjoyment inaccessible for many. SERC NEWT fosters collaboration with the many wonderful outdoor, health, and cultural groups affiliated with UC Berkeley and beyond to make this happen. SERC cultivates a collaborative space to strengthen the collective effectiveness of the sustainability community, and provides resources for students to actualize their visions of a more equitable, socially just, and resilient future.
You can follow them on Instagram.
Trips for Kids Bay Area
Trips for Kids Bay Area (TFKBA)’s mission is to provide educational biking programs for youth from under-resourced communities in the San Francisco Bay Area that encourage healthy lifestyles, self-discovery, and connection with nature. Their signature programs include Trail Rides, Earn-A-Bike, and Mobile Bike Workshops as well as their social enterprise, The Re-Cyclery Bike Shop.
Young Legacies Inc.
Our mission is to provide a traditional summer camp experience where Black youth expand their comfort zones, develop dynamic friendships, and embrace the outdoors.
Young Veterans
Since 2013, YV has cultivated a powerful community, transforming the lives of young people by providing mentorship, development programs, and a deep sense of belonging. Our mission is to empower youth with wisdom beyond their years to activate the creativity, intelligence, and courage within. YV catalyzes young people’s journey toward their best selves, and deepens their commitment to serving their communities.
You can follow them on Instagram.
Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC)
In 2008, Arab youth—ranging in ages from 14 to 22—came together for an 8-day leadership training program led by AROC. The experience was so empowering that the youth participants decided to continue their work together and to extend that work towards the betterment of not only the Arab community but for other marginalized groups in the Bay Area. Through this program youth are contributing to the EJ movement, as well as the benefits they receive from being in nature.
Camp Kaleidoscope
Camp Kaleidoscope provides a free, supportive week-long overnight camp experience and year-long programming for children who have a parent who is currently in treatment for cancer, is in remission from cancer or who has died from cancer. We serve 150 campers from ages 6 to 17 who are spread across the San Francisco Bay Area. These children are often overlooked, and many come from marginalized communities where they are not able to afford summer camps or have easy access to a mental health therapist. Our services provide our campers the unique opportunity to build friendships and gain strength from peers facing similar challenges. We create programming, such as a camp-wide carnival and numerous hiking trips, where our campers can focus on having fun and being in the outdoors. With Camp Kaleidoscope, campers can create life-long friendships and mentorship with their counselors that allow them to cope with the many burdens that come along with cancer.
EARTHseed Farm & Permaculture Center
Our Mission is to reconnect our Afro-Indigenous communities to our more-than-human kin by offering: Educational programming about ecological design strategies and principles rooted in Afro-Indigenous wisdom. Offering space for gatherings, retreats, and tours that heal and restore while strengthening our communities relationships with each other, the earth, and our more than human kin. Nourishing and resourcing families and community members with our fruit kin though our U-Pick and community nourishment program. Serving as an inspiring model that showcases resilience and Afro Indigenous permaculture strategies.
Hummingbirds Urban Farming Collective
The Hummingbirds Urban Farming Collective is dedicated to creating multi-generational Black-centered spaces that focus on deepening connection to the land. They are building community and conversations through workshops, gatherings, reclaiming public spaces, resource sharing, curriculum development, and urban farming projects.
You can follow them on Instagram.
Inner City Bliss
“Discovering Nature’s Bliss” Nature Day outing is an event designed to invite BIPOC youth to explore and experience the wonders of nature in our local community. Through mindfulness, NIA Dance, plant life education and physical activities, attendees will learn how to cultivate a greater sense of belonging while being outdoors. We aim to provide local youth with the opportunity to engage with natural spaces, as well as to learn about the importance of mindfulness, nutrition, and physical activity. In addition to learning, attendees will also partake in fun activities such as meditation, NIA Dance, mindful nature walks, and gardening workshops. With this event, we hope to inspire a deeper connection with nature and foster healthier habits in our local communities.
Life Frames Inc. A Living Library Think Park & Gardens
The mission of Life Frames Inc. : A Living Library & Think Parks is to create garden based learning centers where students and community members of all ages participate in greening their neighborhoods.
Sonoma Ecology Center
Sonoma Ecology Center, in collaboration with the Mishewal Wappo tribe, will host seasonal tribal cultural gatherings at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, the ancestral village site of the tribe. The cultural gatherings, including campouts and language classes, will foster connections among tribal members, providing a place to reconnect with friends and relatives, and engage in cultural exchange and mutual learning. Tribal elders serve as a bridge between generations, preserving and passing on important traditions, ceremonies, foods, and medicines. By sharing their rich knowledge, stories, and practices, they can impart valuable cultural heritage to younger members, many of whom have not had previous opportunities to learn. The cultural gatherings will continue to play a crucial role in maintaining and revitalizing Mishewal Wappo traditions for future generations.
The Black Neighborhood
The Black Neighborhood (T.B.N.) is a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating authentic and safe spaces for the Black community. We empower the Black community through mental health initiatives, youth mentorship programs, food distribution, and community wellness events, fostering a sense of unity and support
You can follow them on Instagram.
Weekend-Adventures
Weekend-Adventures is a San Francisco based project of the San Francisco Study Center whose mission is to show youth and children who they are beyond their neighborhoods by leading experiences in the arts, sciences, and the outdoors. They serve BIPOC youth and children from the region with a priority given to youth living within the many pockets of poverty. Helping local youth explore the outdoors in safe and healthy ways.
You can learn more about next steps with the Youth Access to Nature Fund, including how and when to apply for grants, by joining our email community. For time-sensitive questions about applying, we warmly invite you to directly contact Amelia Vigil, our Grantmaking and Program Manager, at [email protected].
If you would like to learn more about joining this pooled fund, please contact our Director of Development Danielle Wolfrum at [email protected].
Thank you for your partnership in our work toward liberation.
Feature photo courtesy of partner organization Waterside Workshops.