PROFILE: OUTDOORS FOR ALL

A 21st-century environmental movement depends on getting more people unplugged and outside. Nature and the opportunity to play outdoors should not be a luxury that’s accessible only to a privileged few. Our support for the Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All program allows it to reach across racial, ethnic, and economic barriers to ensure that all people have access to nature, opportunities to connect with each other, and a voice in our shared conservation future.

900 outings 

11,000 youth outside

15,000 veterans and military family members outdoors

access to nature 

is a human right

MILITARY

military families healing through nature

After leaving the Army four years ago, New York City resident Charmaine Tillet suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. It was a struggle just to get out the door of her apartment. Then she joined a Sierra Club group for veterans who are also single mothers. The group, run by Sierra Club Military Outdoors, uses adventure therapy—hiking and rock climbing—to help veterans transition back to civilian life and become champions for environmental conservation.

YOUTH

cultivating new environmental champions

For more than a decade, Detroit’s only campground, Scout Hollow, was overgrown with weeds and closed to the public. Then the Sierra Club stepped in to reopen the campground and ensure that young people around the city would be able to visit it. In the three years since, more than 1,000 Detroit youth have visited Scout Hollow, many of them immersing themselves in nature for the first time ever. 

“The female veterans outing group has made a world of difference for me. Saying ‘yes’ to new experiences with new people has brought me to a place I never thought I’d reach. I feel more open and safer than I’ve been in forever. Trust is a biggie for me, yet it’s becoming easier with my Sierra Club family.” 

Charmaine Tillet
US Army veteran and Sierra Club Military
Outdoors participant

“It was a 180 for me to go from midtown Detroit to a place that has no buildings, no streetlights, and no distractions, other than trees rustling and insect noises. It hit me that this isn’t an infinite resource. It’s very finite. If somebody doesn’t take care of the environment, it’s going to be destroyed.” 

Michael Johnson, Age 17
Detroit Outdoors participant