Increase in Outdoor Activities due to COVID-19

Are your local parks and trails far busier than usual? Is it harder to find a trailhead parking spot — not to mention new bikes, hiking boots and camping gear? It’s not your imagination. New data shows COVID-related impacts to participation in April, May and June of 2020. Americans have flocked to outdoor recreation amid COVID restrictions, as the data from OIA indicates.

  • Americans took up new activities in significant numbers in April, May and June of 2020. Among the biggest gainers were running, cycling and hiking.
  • Walking, running and hiking were widely considered the safest activities in which to participate.
  • Among the five activity segments measured (team, fitness, outdoor, individual and racquet) outdoor saw the lowest impact due to COVID shutdowns, as just 34 percent of respondents said they could not participate in outdoor activities due to pandemic restrictions. Team sports were hardest hit at nearly 69 percent, followed by racquet at 55 percent.
  • Urban participants flocked to outdoor activities: Running, bicycling, day hiking, bird watching and camping participation all rose noticeably among urban respondents since March shutdowns.
  • Looking at April, May and June of 2020 versus the same period in 2019, unweighted participation rates for day hiking rose more than any other activity measured, up 8.4 percentage points.

This monthly data will be rolled into a full-year participation study to be published in 2021. The annual study starts with a nationally representative panel of over 1 million Americans and features responses from over 18,000 people ages 6 and older. The study currently includes 122 separate sports, fitness and recreational activities.

THRIVE OUTSIDE PROFILE SERIES: Lexus Morrow

Lexus Morrow

Youth Programs Assistant Coordinator, Outdoor Outreach, San Diego

Lexus Morrow was no stranger to Outdoor Outreach, an organization that gets San Diego kids into the outdoors, when she joined its staff last year: She went through the program herself when she was in high school, and ultimately built her career off of the passion for outdoor education she fostered with them. Program leads at Outdoor Outreach brought her rock climbing and surfing and gave her access to places that were previously unreachable to her, without a car, in a city where a 15-minute car ride to the beach can take hours by bus.

As the country looks to quickly make fundamental changes to access and inclusion for BIPOC across the board, Morrow says creating more equitable access to the outdoors isn’t just important, it’s urgent. “Get people back into nature, and I think you get people back into the root of who they are,” she says.

We asked Morrow about her experience with Outdoor Outreach and her hopes for the tens of thousands of students that have gone through its programs.

What was your experience with Outdoor Outreach like?

It was basically my introduction to the outdoors. I was in foster care from basically when I was an infant until I was about 10 years old, and in those 10 years, I was very much in the outdoors, in the backyard, riding my bicycle. I was a kid that played in the dirt outside of our house, or in a park. But when I want back to live with my mother after I was 10, I lost that innocent connection with the outdoors.

I was very much an antisocial kid, very isolated—I always had my head in a book, wanting to get through school as fast as possible, so I can go off to college and get away from everything, that I didn’t really think about doing anything fun. In 10th grade, a teacher kind of pressured me into joining Outdoor Outreach—she told me she’d give me extra credit on a few assignments if I went.

It’s amazing how easy trust comes, in these activities, in the outdoors. I wasn’t a trusting kid, but it was easy because these people from Outdoor Outreach were there. They were really focused and really passionate about making sure me and the other students with were having fun, that we were eating right, that we were drinking. They were all about “challenge by choice,” so we could sit out or stay on the beach and play and make sandcastles.

They weren’t expecting anything out of us, just to be there. I hadn’t had that in a long time in my life. I think that’s really what kind of changed me, as a person. Having someone just to be there without any preconceived notions about me, just wanting me to be happy.

How have you seen students respond to programming?

As a kid who was once in these programs, I can say that it’s a dramatic difference. One student I talk about all the time came in and was like, “I’m never going to rock climb.” And then she got on the rock climbing wall and didn’t want to get down. She did all four routes and then rappelled, and it was the funnest thing she could do. Another student was really afraid of heights. He managed to get up the wall and told me that some parts were difficult and he wanted to stop, but he kept going. And he said he could take that into his life, how he’s really bad at school but knows he can do it now because he rock climbed. It was a physical manifestation of something he didn’t think he could do, and so he said, “If I can do this, then I can totally finish school.”

Another student was really depressed. She came to our programs and was smiling and laughing and saying she’s really happy that she came. Kids tell you that they found their best friend, that they found an activity that they love. You see smiles and joy on the faces of kids who, when they first came in, they were closed off and didn’t want to talk to anybody and they were afraid that they would be judged by what happened in the past or what they did or their mental health issues. It’s just amazing. In eight weeks, we see such a remarkable change in these kids. It’s like looking at totally different children.

What are your hopes for the students you work with?

I hope they realize that what we’re giving them isn’t something that should have ever taken us to give it to them. That this is out there, and it’s theirs, and if they want it that they can go get it.

As much as these activities and these people are there for them, nature is also there for them, and it can be as calming and as healing as they need it to be. It’s an amazing place. It’s an amazing resource that people can use to really take control of their lives, and of their future.

It really should be something that’s there every day, that they have access to, and that they can say yes or no to. But they’re being told that they don’t have access to it, and I just want to be able to make sure that they get to these places they see on TV. These are our places. It’s not the people on TV’s place; it’s ours. And we have just as much right to it. We just have to figure out a way to give them access to it, when it should have already been given to us in the first place.

What changes can we work toward in the near future to increase access to the outdoors?

I think we need to get knowledge to people about the places they can go to recreate. Here’s where they can go to rock climb, or take beginner classes in swimming, and make sure that the information is everywhere so people can see it.

Another big thing is transportation. I never would have been able to get to the beach or anything like that, or do any of these things, if I had to get there myself. Transportation is huge.

I live in San Diego and I’m like 15 minutes by car from the beach, but it takes about three hours by bus to get there. You go the long, long way around, and most bus stops aren’t in front of the beach, they stop like a half a mile from the beach.

So if you have kids, or a car seat, or anything like that, and you want to take your family, and you don’t have a car, then you’re walking your kids down the street from the bus stop, lugging all of your stuff, your food, your water, your toys, your umbrella, all that, to get to the beach for a few hours of fun. And then you have to get back on the bus, for another two-hour journey home. The payoff isn’t worth what you have to put into it. So people don’t go. What’s the point of me going to sit on a beach for two hours if I have to spend four hours getting there? If you want to improve access, then the transportation needs to be there.

We also need to increase awareness that, for some people, the outdoors isn’t somewhere that they see themselves. That was a big thing for me—if I see someone who looks like me, I’m far more comfortable being in the outdoors. We need to make sure that if we’re going to get people outdoors, we get them outdoors in a diverse setting, so they’re not the only Black kid in a group of Asians or in a group of white people.

Why is it so urgent to increase access?

It should be here already. It’s so important because it should already exist, and it doesn’t. I think it’s important that some people don’t know about these places and these spaces, and they don’t know that they’re allowed to go. It’s not fair, and really we have seen over generations and decades how much we have lost, in terms of mental, physical, and emotional health. Nature makes healthier people, it makes better people and stronger people. And it makes a stronger planet.

We’ve lost so much of the planet—animals, people, generations of kids, as adults, with diabetes and suicide and mental health issues and physical issues. I think it really stems from the fact that we have lost our contact with the world around us, and because we don’t have the equity of being in these places. If you don’t go to these places, why the hell do you care about what happens to them? If what you’re thinking about is making rent and getting food on your table and you’re living with that much stress and anxiety and fear every day, of not being able to put food on the table, who cares about the koalas or the pandas or lions that are dying. We’ve become so focused on trying to live every day and survive every day that we’ve forgotten what living looks like.

BIG NEWS: Senate passes the Great American Outdoors Act

GREAT AMERICAN OUTDOORS ACT PASSES SENATE 73-25. ON TO THE HOUSE.

Today, we’re reaching out with good news. The Great American Outdoors Act, the legislation to provide full and permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and provide funding to begin tackling the deferred maintenance backlog on federal public lands, PASSED 73-25 with overwhelming bipartisan support.

As we take steps toward economic recovery from COVID-19, federal investment in our public lands and waterways is critical to boost local economies, create thousands of jobs and protect and improve our national parks.

As our advocacy efforts transition to the House of Representatives, OIA would like to thank the senators who sponsored, co-sponsored and championed the Great American Outdoors Act, and we also encourage you to thank your senators for their support.

While this vote was an important hurdle to overcome, it does not have the president’s signature yet, so stay tuned. We will reach out again soon with an ask for your engagement with your House delegation.

Thank you for your support, outreach and efforts so far. That GAOA passed the Senate with the majority is a testament to the bipartisan nature of our work and a demonstration of the impact of our industry’s collective voice.

Thrive Outside Profile Series: Ray Rivera

Since he was a kid growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the outdoors have been a passion for Ray Rivera. Through a government career involving a stint at the Department of the Interior and the White House Council on Environmental Quality under the Obama Administration, Rivera has long tied together his two passions: public policy and expanding access to and diversity within outdoor recreation.

Now, on the board for the Outdoor Foundation, Rivera is working on the Thrive Outside Community Initiative, which provides multi-year capacity building grants to diverse communities in order to create or strengthen partnerships between existing local organizations such as schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs and nonprofit conservation and outdoor organizations that create repeat and reinforcing positive outdoor experiences for kids and families. We asked for his thoughts on the program’s goals, the importance of diversifying the next generations of outdoorists, and what drives his passion for the project.

 

What is Thrive Outside trying to achieve?

Thrive Outside is about collective impact. If we’re going to solve the problem of diversifying outdoor recreation, including socioeconomic and age diversity, it’s going to have to come from these communities and these organizations that already have members who are more diverse in many different ways.

Instead of creating new programs—unless that’s what a community wants—we’re focusing on connecting groups that have already been doing the work, so we can multiply their impact. There may be, for example, a kayaking group five miles downstream from a group doing science exploration on the banks of the river, and before they weren’t talking to each other. But now, they’re collaborating and leveraging each other’s expertise, getting each other’s participants to cross-pollinate and get into different aspects of the outdoor world.

 

What’s your dream for the impact Thrive Outside can have?

We’re working with all these communities and then kind of pulling the quantitative and qualitative resources to keep finding what’s working, what’s not, what the best practices are, and what’s making a difference.

We want to help kids have frequent, repeat experiences—not just experience the outdoors one time. Sometimes people get to go to the Tetons for a week and it changes their life, but in terms of creating lifelong conservatists and outdoor enthusiasts, that usually comes from repeatable and varied experiences.

 

What was your outdoor experience like growing up?

I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we were very fortunate to have public lands all around us. I also grew up fairly low-income. My dad’s side of the family is from New Mexico, and he met my mom when he was stationed in South Korea when he was in the Army. Growing up, we would go camping here or there, but we didn’t spend a ton of time in the outdoors. It was actually my uncle and aunt, who didn’t have kids, who took my brother and I out for moonlight hikes and taught us how to mountain bike. As I got into politics, public policy, and government, I quickly started to realize that we have to do a lot of work to protect these places we love so much. They don’t just take care of themselves. It takes resources, people, and commitment.

 

How do the outdoors influence your life today?

Politics and government are places where people have a lot of passion, but it’s also very frenetic. It’s a career where you’re carrying two cell phones and checking four email addresses and the news cycle and the spin cycle of the day. Since high school, it’s been part of my life to live this fast-paced, frenetic advocacy, grassroots-organizing lifestyle. Maybe you’re knocking on doors all day, so you get a little bit of fresh air, but you’re not really in nature. Outdoor recreation is the counterpoint to that and allows me to live a balanced lifestyle, so that when I have time away from organizing for something that was so passionate and all-consuming, I can get outdoors and mountain bike or do some skiing and hiking.

 

What are your hopes for future generations of outdoorists? What does the ideal outdoor world look like for them?

Aside from inclusivity, we need to demystify the outdoors and increase the number of outdoor activities that you can access within close range, especially in urban areas. There are so many ways to be involved in the outdoors, and we have to send that message. The outdoors is for people barbecuing at Sloans Lake in Denver and for people who want to hang off a cliff over a canyon. I think we have to do a better job of messaging that.

The outdoors also needs our protection, love, and commitment to perpetuate it for the next generation. As people get involved with the outdoors, they also need to learn how to impact public policy to protect the outdoors. The outdoors are an avenue for you to get involved with public policy in a way that feels very personal to you. We all feel the difference when we can spend many magical moments in the outdoors, and we know what it means to our life.

We have work to do. We are committed.

The recent police killing of George Floyd and countless instances of racism and racial violence against Black people are alarming and horrific. We know these events are not isolated and are part of a long history of systemic racism and injustice in our country and in the outdoors. People thriving outside is a core value for our industry and we know that racism, funding, and policies have often prevented equitable access and enjoyment of the outdoors. As the outdoor industry, we must immediately take action and increase our commitment to achieve racial justice, diversity, equity and inclusion in the outdoors, in our workplaces and across the country.

As the association for the outdoor industry, we have a voice—and a corresponding responsibility to do more. We don’t have all of the answers and have listening and learning to do, but we must do better and start now.

We need to admit that we are part of the problem. We must listen to, learn from and amplify the voices of our Black community leaders, friends and activists. We must take meaningful action. Statements of solidarity are important, but action is paramount.

To start, OIA commits to do the following:

  • LISTEN: At the executive level and on our board of directors, we can and will do better listening and learning. Together with Snowsports Industries America and Camber Outdoors, we are working together on how we will convene organizations that represent diverse backgrounds and organizations focused on diversity, equity and inclusion to listen and learn what more the outdoor industry can do. We will start this month and will have more to share on this very soon. We will report on our goals, action and progress and highlight outcomes at the January 2021 Outdoor + Snow Show.
  • ADVOCATE:  We will use our voices as individuals and as companies to call out racism in the outdoors, in our workplaces and in our lives. We have and will continue to advocate for policies and programs that do more to make the outdoors a safe, welcoming and equitable choice for everyone.
  • HIRE: We commit to do better in hiring and recruiting people of color as employees in our companies as well as on our board of directors.
  • DONATE:  We are supporting the NAACP with a donation, and encourage our member companies to join us and give money to organizations that advance anti-racism.
  • PROMOTE:  We will use our platform and reach to amplify Black outdoor organizations and voices. We will continue to support the work of the Outdoor Foundation’s Thrive Outside Communities, which you can read about here.

We are committed to this work. We stand in solidarity with the Black community. Together We Are a Force is a statement that includes not just our outdoor industry members but also speaks to the power of us as individuals across all races, genders, ethnicities and backgrounds to come together.

Thrive Outside Atlanta: Connecting With the Outdoors During COVID-19

In its first year, The Outdoor Foundation’s Thrive Outside Community Initiative has made multi-year grants to four regions across the country (San Diego, Oklahoma City, Atlanta and Grand Rapids) to build and strengthen networks focused on providing children and families with repeat and reinforcing experiences in the outdoors. Our communities are finding unique ways to positively impact their communities during the COVID-19 crisis.

We’re proud to share the ways one Thrive Outside Atlanta organization, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, are continuing to connect with and serve their local youth.

 

 

“Providing accessible, sensory-based, outdoor programming through technology”

With a curriculum that typically encourages the use of our senses for learning and exploring, shifting to online curriculum initially seemed to be a daunting task for us at West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA).

At WAWA, we believe that the power of play, inquiry instruction, social constructivism and cultural relevance are foundational principles of environmental education pedagogy. We quickly identified a crossroads between our pedagogy and technology in order to offer sensory-based livestreams in lieu of O-ACADEMY, our spring break camp.

When developing content for digital audiences in response to COVID-19, there were a few important factors to consider including digital accessibility, exercises that can be completed outdoors, and sensory-based engagement with youth. Because some residents in our community struggle with access to technology to complete daily tasks such as school-based distance learning, we decided to use accessible social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram to host content, because we know many of our constituents utilize these channels. With COVID-19 anchoring us all at home, we chose programs that could be done outdoors and with little supplies. Lastly, we wanted to ensure the programs feel participatory, and so, we encourage families to grab household items and participate in programming that draws on our senses to enhance our understanding of the outside world.

One of our programs “Sensory with Soils” provides youth a learning opportunity from simply playing in the dirt. During this program, we encourage the touch and observation of soil types to understand the benefits and best uses of each soil.

We also generated a survey among our online communities to determine if the increased digital content was useful or overwhelming. The results of this survey will help us to determine how we continue developing digital content and through which platforms we deliver it. WAWA will continue to provide accessible, sensory-based outdoor programming for digital audiences throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and we look forward to adding more digital offerings to our environmental education moving forward.

Anamarie Shreeves,
Environmental Education Programs Manager,
West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA)

Thrive Outside Grand Rapids: Connecting with the Outdoors During COVID-19

In its first year, The Outdoor Foundation’s Thrive Outside Community Initiative has made multi-year grants to four regions across the country (San Diego, Oklahoma City, Atlanta and Grand Rapids) to build and strengthen networks focused on providing children and families with repeat and reinforcing experiences in the outdoors. Our communities are finding unique ways to positively impact their communities during the COVID-19 crisis.

The following work, led by our partner organization Our Community’s Children in Thrive Outside Grand Rapids, has applicability in other regions across the nation that are trying to help people experience the outdoors during coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

 

 

With governments issuing stay-at-home protocols, it became clear to one Grand Rapids-based nonprofit that parents and children didn’t realize that it was still ok to venture outside to boost mental and physical health. “We talked with after-school providers and found out that parents didn’t know what they could do outside. So, we reviewed local, state and national standards and developed a resource for parents on the subject,” said Lynn Heemstra, executive director of Grand Rapids’ Our Community’s Children program.

The resource comes in the form of a brief publication titled “Yes, You Can Go Outside” and is available to families in both English and Spanish. To create the document, Our Community’s Children worked closely with local city staff and leaders from Grand Rapids Public Schools. The publication honors the importance of maintaining social distancing, and reminds families that children should not be interacting with friends other than online, and they should not use playground equipment or engage in any close-contact sports such as basketball, soccer or football.

The resource provides other suggestions to help families get a nature break, including going for walks, biking, fishing, listening to birds and exploring trails. All this is packaged with some common sense tips (such as taking your own water bottle, avoiding public restrooms and water fountains). Be sure to check local guidelines when applying this resource to your region, and good luck getting outside to enjoy some fresh air during these challenging times.

Thrive Outside OKC: Connecting with the Outdoors During COVID-19

In its first year, The Outdoor Foundation’s Thrive Outside Community Initiative has made multi-year grants to four regions across the country (San Diego, Oklahoma City, Atlanta and Grand Rapids) to build and strengthen networks focused on providing children and families with repeat and reinforcing experiences in the outdoors. Our communities are finding unique ways to positively impact their communities during the COVID-19 crisis.

We’re proud to share the innovative work from our Thrive Outside Oklahoma City Community through one of their leading organizations RIVERSPORT.

 

 

Staying connected to the outdoors right now is challenging. We want to offer families a fun, easy activity that uses everyday items, and we want to tie it into getting more kids and families involved in kayaking and canoeing.

We launched the RIVERSPORT Cardboard Canoe Challenge inviting Thrive Outside partners and families across the community to “think outside the box” and transform household cardboard into canoes of their own design. While some people are building boats large enough get on the water, others are building mini versions to float in their backyard ponds, pools or even bathtubs. The creativity has been impressive!

This can also be a STEM activity for kids. RIVERSPORT is providing online worksheets exploring the concepts of buoyancy, boat design, engineering basics, Newton’s Laws of Motion and boat vocabulary to help parents who are suddenly teaching science and math at home.

This curriculum is part of RIVERSPORT’s SOAR initiative – Success through Outdoor Adventure and Recreation – a collaborative learning adventure that brings together Thrive Outside and STEM education in a teamwork experience. It begins in the classroom where kids divide into teams to build cardboard canoes, then culminates in a field trip to RIVERSPORT where they race and every student has the opportunity to go paddling. Our goal is to offer the experience to every seventh-grader in Oklahoma City metro area Title 1 schools.

Once shelter-in-place restrictions are lifted, RIVERSPORT is planning a community-wide Cardboard Canoe Challenge day as way to celebrate being back on the water. RIVERSPORT is also encouraging other communities to join the Cardboard Canoe Challenge by either launching their own promotion or sharing RIVERSPORT’s. Everyone can use #cardboardcanoe as a way to connect on social media.

For now, the focus is on the fun of spending time with family and staying connected to the outdoors. RIVERSPORT hopes that time spent thinking about and building canoes will encourage families take the next the step and try kayaking or canoeing this summer.

To learn more or download the STEM worksheets, visit riversportokc.org/cardboardcanoe or email info@riversportokc.org.

Elizabeth Laurent
RIVERSPORT