Click here to listen to the recent KQED program on youth and Adventure Education.
The Stewardship Council invites you to review and comment on the Letters of Inquiry (LOIs)* that we are invited to submit full proposals for the Initiative Fund. The organizations that wrote these LOIs will have the opportunity to learn from your collective insights as they develop their full applications.
The Initiative Fund is designed to support ventures that eliminate frequently-cited barriers to connecting young people with the outdoors. Grantees will create initiatives that demonstrate their ability to reduce regional or systemic barriers and that will have a ripple effect in their community and region. Grantees in the Initiative Fund will be expected to document their project, approach, successes, and challenges and to widely share their work and findings. Stewardship Council staff will reach out to local entities to determine the scope and aim of individual grant applications. In general, the fund will continue to target the issues and barriers that keep underserved youth from accessing the outdoors.
As you review these LOIs, please frame your review around the following four questions. Please be specific and provide examples and/or references to support your comments.
1) How will the proposed Initiative reduce barriers that prevent underserved youth from accessing the outdoors?
2) How does the proposed Initiative demonstrate the potential to achieve impact beyond one organization or community?
3) How does the proposed Initiative leverage and build on past or current efforts to connect underserved youth to the outdoors?
4) How would you strengthen this Initiative?
*As you review the LOIs, please note Bay Area Outward Bound and Outward Bound Adventures are two separate organizations.