Bay Area Wilderness Training
"We love what Bay Area Wilderness Training program as it brings outdoor education together for the underserved youth of California. Come to Sanctuary Bistro for the benefit dinner on March 6 by making a reservation today. I asked Scott Wolland, Executive Director, about BAWT. " -Jennifer
Inspiration
I’m thrilled to have been the Executive Director for 3.5 years for such a deeply rooted in community wilderness education organization. I’ve loved being in wild places all of my life. I was inspired as a young person catching frogs, moles, and snakes at a summer camp, bicycling cross country as a teenager, and spending time in nature with relatives. In 1990, I graduated from college, moved to Northern California and joined Redwood Summer , a movement to protect the last remaining old growth redwood forests. It was modeled after Mississippi Summer and the Freedom Riders. I spent a lot of time in the woods and fell more in love with mother earth. I was inspired by a community of activists who stood up for something important that was bigger than themselves.
My true calling came not only through that activism, but through environmental education. 25 years ago I launched my career in the environmental education field. Young people inspire me because they question assumptions and don’t always accept the status quo. I feel blessed to have worked with so many teachers over the years and right now as the Executive Director at Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) , the teachers and youth workers are doing really important work to help underserved and underrepresented young people get outside. I want to be a part of the solution so that our communities can survive and thrive (humans and other animals, plants, fungi, and habitats).
About BAWT
Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) is a nonprofit organization that helps provide over 8,000 Bay Area youth each year with life-changing outdoor experiences. Since 1999, we’ve been providing support to teachers and youth workers and breaking down barriers to accessing outdoor spaces. Our dynamic model is “train-the-trainer”, meaning we empower, educate, and provide resources to the people in our community that are already doing great work with youth. Once youth workers have the resources at their disposal, they are confident enough to lead safe and transformative trips into the wilderness. We generally support backpacking (backcountry) and car-camping (front-country) trips, but also support snowshoeing, skiing, day hiking, summer camps, and other forms of outdoor adventures. At BAWT we believe that properly utilized, the outdoors can be a powerful tool for youth development, education, and personal growth. One of the largest ways we support these outdoor trips is free gear loans from our two gear libraries. After taking a leadership training course, teachers and youth workers can borrow all the equipment, gear, and clothing for their group or classroom to have a safe and fun trip.
BAWT's MISSION
Bay Area Wilderness Training’s mission is to create opportunities for youth from the San Francisco Bay Area to experience wilderness first hand. To achieve our mission, we train teachers and youth workers, provide free outdoor gear loans, give financial support, and foster community collaboration. . Our core values we use to shape our work are the powerful concepts of diversity, risk, environmental stewardship, and strong relationships.
Since our founding in 1999, BAWT has served over 48,000 youth in the Bay Area. We provide support to over 300 outdoor trips annually. In 2015, we supported 8,400 youth on 18,133 camp nights. One camp night is equal to one young person spending one night in the outdoors. Many of these kids have never been in outdoor spaces and some have never left the city at all.
Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) envisions a world where all youth have access to the wilderness. We believe that youth, once exposed to the wilderness, have a broadened sense of themselves, one another, and the world around them and are better prepared to lead social and environmental change.
Our train-the-trainer model helps remove barriers to access by providing low-cost training and free equipment loans to over 8,000 youth each year (85% are youth of color). The BAWT community supports camping, backpacking, and hiking trips near and far from urban areas, and 75% of our clients are from low income households. Dinner proceeds will support our Oakland Gear Library and free equipment loans for trained teachers. www.bawt.org
FROM THE PARTICIPANTS
A speech given at the annual Into The Wild fundraiser eventOctober 2015
My Name is Danelia Lopez, I’m 24, born and raised in the concrete jungle of San Francisco. Ten years ago I met one of the most influential people in my life. Aaron Gilbert, a passionate youth worker from Chicago. I was 14 years old and went on my first backpacking trip to Big Sur. The idea of hiking 7 miles, with a 50 pound bag on my back sounded more appealing than sticking around at home. See at that time there was a lot going on at home, four of us were sharing one room, my mom’s boyfriend who had a talent of getting drunk and abusive, was living with us, I needed a break. After that first trip I felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. I knew I had to keep getting outdoors.
That first trip was a crucial turning point. Changing my environment allowed me to get out of my head and get in tune with myself. I went home feeling better than ever. The outdoors gave me the chance to heal and grow, ready to face reality.
I’m simply one of the many youth, who are referred to as “first generation, low-income, under-resourced, under-privileged, minority, urban youth, at-risk.” Call us what you will, but this category is what we are born into, and if we are lucky, we get the right people and resources during critical points in our lives, have a stable enough home, and maybe graduate high school, go to college and become a contributing member of society. That’s only if we are lucky.
I’ve learned you have to be open to opportunities as they present themselves and you don’t know where, when, or if they’ll come. My access point to critical experiences and resources was Mission Graduates who facilitated trips and, Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) who provided me with gear. Everything a poor brown youth, living in the Mission, would need to get out of the urban jungle.
I got a degree in Environmental Science from Whittier College. I wanted to deepen my connection and understanding of the natural world. After school, Aaron told me about a job opportunity with Outdoor Educators Institute. With Aaron’s advice and the financial support of my brother Owen, I applied and was accepted.
Outdoor Educators Institute advanced my skills, knowledge, and expanded my network within the outdoor community. After the program I wanted to connect Mission youth to the outdoors. So I got a job with Seven Tepees Youth Program. With Seven Tepees I helped plan and lead over 10 outdoor trips with middle and high school youth using mostly BAWT Gear. I then went on to become a BAWT faculty member as an assistant leader on a Frontcountry Leadership Training. Many things threaten access to critical resources like BAWT and Seven Tepees. Organizations like these strengthen and give hope to community members. The city is getting expensive and brown families are being uprooted left and right. They are losing access to the resources put in place to support them. That doesn’t make sense, and so it pains me to watch the rise in displacement and the obvious suffering of the neighborhood, and kids are not blind to this. I believe in order to help the community one must work from within it. Connecting with youth, and getting them outside, is one sure way to make a difference. Training other youth workers, to get youth outside is another.
Even though I am no longer with 7 Tepees, I still volunteer. Just this weekend I helped lead a trip to Armstrong Redwoods with 13-- 6th graders who went backpacking for the first time. We hiked a total of 11.4 miles. On the hike out I was walking with a little girl named Ana, she was the cutest and tiniest of the bunch, carrying a big pack, and 3 miles out she hit a wall. I told Ana, “You, are a warrior princess!” She knew it, but needed someone to remind her and within minutes she decided to continue and catch the faster hikers. I stayed behind to motivate the rest. We had lunch at a creek, and after lunch the youth are instructed to cross a bridge and yell something they’re proud of. As Ana crossed the bridge, with her fist held high, she yelled “I am a Warrior!”
From a Diego, a recent Bay Area High School trip participant:
“Over the course of 5 days of backpacking, I learned a little about myself, my friends, and my teachers. I realized this was the longest I’d been without my phone since middle school. The trip helped me remember what fun was like before phones and that backpacking was a way to get to know people beyond stalking their FaceBook or Twitter Feeds. I learned that I still exist without selfies. I want to sign up for backpacking next year."
MORE ABOUT US AND WHAT WE DO?
We have three gear libraries – Oakland, Milpitas in the South Bay, and are a partner in San Francisco’s Camping at the Presidio Program (with The Parks Conservancy, The Presidio Trust, and ther NPS).
In 2015 we helped 8,400 youth get out on 314 trips for a total of 18,133 campnights. We have over 200 community partners.
We are fiscally sponsored by the Earth Island Institute
UPCOMING EVENTS
The third Wednesday of every month we hold a Discovery Session and Volunteer Night for folks interested in getting involved with BAWT. Here folks can find out more ways to get involved, whether that be as a Gear Corps volunteer in the gear library, becoming a member of our Programs or Development Committees, or fundraising through our Climbing for Kids program. The next Discovery Session dates are February 17th and March 16th. Check our website for more info and to RSVP. http://www.bawt.org/programs/community/discovery-session-and-volunteer-night/
HOW BAWT EXEMPLIFIES COMMUNITY
Community: Bay Area Wilderness Training is a well known and important network within the Bay Area’s Youth Serving Community. The early stages of our movement came in 1968 and listening to the needs of the community is in our DNA. The idea to train community leaders to take kids they already know outdoors was not actually ours. It came from folks within the community who said “we don’t want you to take our kids out camping, we want you to train us to take them outside on our own, show us how to do it—we know them already and you don’t” We are also leading by example to support diversity, equity and inclusion for outdoor organizations, schools and community groups.
Compassion: We think every young person has a right to experience the outdoors . We offer low-cost training and FREE equipment loans to help make this happen.
TIPS TO LIVING A MORE COMPASSIONATE LIFE
Listen more, and find a way to be connected to the natural world. Nature is the best teacher.
INTERESTING FACTS
At BAWT we have a lot of camp cooking experience, though none of us can claim we are up-top chefs in a normal kitchen environment. We believe that food on a camping trip should be hearty, tasty, and plentiful. In order to be culturally relevant and diet sensitive, a menu for a camping trip should always get input from participants. Food anxiety during camping trips is a very real thing, and meals are one area that should not be a “growth opportunity” when camping with kids. On the contrary, food is one of the most comforting and enjoyable parts of our day and we feel that should be the same in the backcountry. We provide food to our teachers and youth workers on our adult training courses and offer them a gluten free vegan and vegetarian base and then individuals can add what they’d like. When I took our 5 day back country training (Wilderness Leadership Training or WLT) I ate vegan the whole time (I’m a vegetarian who normally eats mostly vegan) and was fully fueled up during the trip. My favorite meal was the last night; we had a Thai Soup with rice noodles, curry, and lots of veggies. I think I ate three giant bowls!
Our lifestyle tip: GET OUTSIDE!!!
CHECK THEM OUThttp://www.bawt.org/
http://www.climbingforkids.org/