Foundation News

Getting outdoors is good for all of us. The Sierra Club understands this extremely well and has been getting Americans outdoors for more than a century. In 1903, John Muir took President Theodore Roosevelt to Yosemite for three days of camping that would help launch our National Park system. Club volunteer leaders across the country have carried on the tradition, inspiring more than 250,000 people each year to get off their couches and, in keeping with the Sierra Club’s mission, “explore, enjoy and protect” their natural environment.

The Sierra Club was very early to identify the need to share outdoor experiences with communities underrepresented in the environmental movement when they started Inner City Outings (now Inspiring Connections Outdoors) in the 1970s. In 2014, 55 volunteer-run Inspiring Connections Outdoors groups nationwide conducted more than 900 outings for approximately 14,000 participants.

Now, we have Sierra Club Outdoors, a program funded by The Sierra Club Foundation and started in 2013 to get even greater numbers of people outside. Sierra Club Outdoors has been able to develop strong partnerships with other outdoors groups, like Outdoor Afro and GirlTrek, to reach more people and more diverse populations. Sierra Club Outdoors has provided more resources for training of volunteer leaders and for promotion of programs through a redesigned website, newsletters, blogs, and social media sites.

I am a proud supporter of Sierra Club Outdoors because I believe in order to have more people working to protect the outdoors, we need more people spending time outdoors. The environmental movement as a whole will not maintain the strength it needs to preserve our wild places if enough people aren’t committed to ensuring it happens. That is why we need to get people outside now, in the greatest possible numbers, to foster a population that will watch over the air, lands, and water they have come to appreciate and that are critical both to us and wildlife.

You can help by getting involved in outings or by making a donation to Sierra Club Outdoors. Let’s give thousands more people who might not otherwise be able to spend time in nature the opportunity to feel inspired by the outdoors, and I hope to see you out there too!

-- Doug Walker, Board of Directors, The Sierra Club Foundation