Partner Story
Many Chapters, Common Stories
AT A GLANCE: Volunteer leaders from Outdoor Afro across the Midwest have run backpacking and camping programs with Get Outside Bus, and every year brings new chapters!
Our Partner
Outdoor Afro
Outdoor Afro celebrates and inspires Black connections and leadership in nature through more than 100 trained volunteer leaders across 32 states. Many of those volunteers use a Get Outside Bus to run their trips.
Location: Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin & Indiana
Audience: Adult chapter members
Focus: Backpacking, Fishing, Dogsledding, Camping, and more!
Program Brief
Outdoor Afro's volunteer leaders bring the community and the leadership. We bring the bus, the gear, and the program support.
Outdoor Afro’s leaders are volunteers. They have day jobs. What they also have is something no amount of equipment can substitute for, which is a group of people who already trust them.
That is the whole reason the partnership works. When Jennifer Johnson decided to take a group backpacking on the Manistee River Trail, people wanted to come. The hard part was the gear, the backpacks for people who had never owned one, renting the right campsite, the four days of food, and the question of what happens if someone needs an evacuation.
Get Outside took care of those pieces in collaboration with Jenn. We brought a support van, a Get Outside Coach to help with instruction, gear for the whole group, and provided support if things went sideways (like dropping off more toilet paper mid-hike). It was Jennifer’s trip, leadership, and operation – we just cleared up some details.
A few months later Reanna Fomby took eighteen people to Starved Rock State Park in Illinois, in October, when the forecast ran from the forties to the seventies. She had been introduced to us by other Outdoor Afro leaders like Jenn: the referral moved leader to leader, inside Outdoor Afro’s own network, and the result has been dozens of people outside from across five states and many cities.
Outdoor Afro provides it’s own training, funding, and support to leaders. Leaders in Indianapolis or Milwaukee are not personally fronting the cost of a weekend for twenty people, and Get Outside can reduce the risk even further, making programs more accessible and easier to put on. And the collaboration grows from there – every Outdoor Afro leader we work with gets an invitation to the Outdoor Inclusive Leadership Certification each June, free. Future programs can be run entirely on their own skills as leaders “cleared” to operate a Get Outside Bus, the final stage of our leadership development journey!
How It Came Together
What was the goal?
Outdoor Afro's model runs on volunteer leaders who organize experiences for their own communities, in their own cities. Several Midwest leaders wanted to take their groups further than a day hike could reach, overnight and into the backcountry, with members who had never camped before.
What made it hard?
Outdoor Afro has an incredible network of both leaders and participants - often the only thing stopping the program was a few resources.
Where did Get Outside Bus come in?
Outdoor Afro volunteers are skilled, but they are not professional outfitters. When participants don’t have gear or transportation, it has to come from somewhere. Get Outside Bus can provide that in collaboration with Outdoor Afro as a program operator, allowing programs to be more accessible to a wider array of leaders.
What changed?
Jennifer led a four-day backpacking program on the Manistee River Trail in Michigan in August. That October, Reanna took eighteen people to a group site at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. Alex planned a backpacking trip in Indiana. The Detroit and Chicago chapters ran a collaboration in Indiana, and the Minneapolis chapter led a winter skills weekend - each of these stories started with one leader introducing another to the resources and support from Get Outside Bus.
What's next?
Every year, Outdoor Afro leaders attend our Outdoor Inclusive Leadership Certification, a gateway to being certified to “check out” a bus and run programs independently!