Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative

Outdoor Adventures' Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative

Outdoor Adventures at UC Davis began in the early 1970s as a student cooperative with the mission of getting students, regardless of their background and experience level, out into nature, doing amazing things. Over the past 40+ years, Outdoor Adventures has been extremely successful, and was once known as the largest outdoor adventure program in the country. However, throughout our success, we failed our mission by not addressing the lack of diversity in our participant, staff and guide communities. In 2020, we decided to look within, and make changes to our unit and programming which will allow for our community to be a more diverse, equitable and inclusive place. We know that this is not going to come easily, and that it will take time, but we are excited to take on this project step by step.

Check out the steps that we are currently working on below. This is just the beginning, more steps and more projects will be added to this page in the months and years to follow.

Outdoor Perspectives Speaker Series

Check out our new speaker series where we talk about diversity in outdoor recreation with professional athletes, industry professionals and OA guides

STEP 1: Look Within

Thao Nguyen graduated from UC Davis in the Spring of 2020. During her time at UC Davis, she worked for Outdoor Adventures in many positions and was always slightly uncomfortable with the fact that she was the only Vietnamese face that she saw when she came to work everyday. During the summer of 2020, after the killing of George Floyd and the resulting protests, Thao decided that she wanted to better understand why there were so few people of color in outdoor recreation and what could be done to drive change. She reached out to Outdoor Adventures' alumni, friends, and other adventure professionals to try to get answers. In total, she interviewed 11 people from all ages, races, and backgrounds. The result of these conversations is a four part series of articles written by Thao and Outdoor Adventures guide, Lindsay Maurer. Each article discusses different barriers limiting access to outdoor recreation and the thoughts of our community on how to create positive change. Outdoor Adventures' leadership will use these articles as a guide as we move forward towards our goal of being a completely inclusive space. The articles will be posted on our website and social media feeds throughout Fall quarter.

Article One: "Outdoor Diversity; Conversations for a Revolution."

Article Two: "Outdoor Diversity: Dollars for Stars"

Article Three: "Look Within: Recognize and Utilize YOUR Privilege"

STEP 2: Get Organized

Outdoor Adventures recognizes that the change that we want to see won't happen overnight and that our focus needs to stay on diversity, equity and inclusion well into the future. To ensure that this happens, we have created a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force. Outdoor Adventures' DEI Task Force is a small group of students and alumni volunteers who are committed to effecting change in the outdoor community at UC Davis by engaging under-represented student groups, creating innovative outreach strategies, offering educational opportunities and initiating fundraising campaigns in an effort to have the "face" of the outdoor adventure community on campus be more representative of the student body as a whole.

At this time we are not currently recruiting new members to our Task Force, however, make sure to follow us on Instagram @ucdavisoa to be alerted of the next time volunteer positions become available.

STEP 3: Increase Access

We know that cost is a large barrier for students who are interested in trying a new activity. We do our best to keep our program costs as low as possible, but the price tag for a rock climbing trip, or camping in Yosemite can still be a little steep. Lowering the cost for trips and classes is a major step to creating a more inclusive and diverse program, however, this is more easily said than done and we will need help. We are currently working on our first fundraising campaign focused on raising funds to reduce the cost of our annual guide trainings. Why guide trainings? We want future participants to see themselves in our guide staff, and know that everyone is welcome here. We know that change starts with leadership so that is where we will start.

If you are interested in donating to help increase access to our programs you can click on the button below to be directed to our DEI Initiative fundraising page.

DONATE HERE

To improve diversity and access, OA is creating an endowment that will provide funding in perpetuity to offer students from underrepresented communities scholarships and fee waivers for our programs.

For the endowment to begin and for OA to succeed in providing equitable access to our programs, we must raise at least $50,000. Our Give Day efforts raised the first $21,000.

Please help us reach our goal by making a gift today to Outdoor Adventures Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fund

If you have always been interested in going on a trip with Outdoor Adventures but couldn't afford it, we give away scholarships through the Campus Rec Fee Waiver program every quarter. Be sure to fill out the Fee Waiver Application as soon as it opens, funds go quickly.