AUDIO:

The following is a rough machine transcript. Click the words to skip to that point in the audio.

TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the EcoNews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC. And we are celebrating Latino Heritage Month this month. Latino Heritage Month is an interesting one because it goes in between two months. We are running it from September 15th to October 15th. And joining me is Luis Avila, the Executive Director of Latino Outdoors. Welcome, Luis.

LUIS AVILA:

Oh, thank you for having me, Tom. And that is interesting, right? An interesting tidbit about Latino Heritage Month starting in mid-September and going through mid-October. And my understanding of that, why that is the case, is because several Latin American countries, particularly in Central America and Mexico, celebrate their Independence Day around the middle of September.

WHEELER:

And we also have now a Latino Conservation Week, although the Latino Conservation Week is not in Latino Heritage Month. That is in July. So we will always remember to celebrate that every July. So Latino Outdoors, a very exciting organization. And Luis is an old friend of mine and of Epic's. Luis used to be headquartered up here in Arcata and is now in the lovely city of Fresno. Luis, tell us about Latino Outdoors. Perhaps kind of describe its founding and what the organization is kind of about.

AVILA:

Yeah, thank you for the question, Tom. Let me back up a little bit. You brought up Latino Conservation Week, so it's really interesting. This year we're celebrating Latino Outdoors' 10th anniversary, and we just celebrated the 10th edition of Latino Conservation Week, which is an annual celebration, as you mentioned, that takes place in July. That is an initiative of one of our good friends, the Hispanic Access Foundation. They started that in 2014. That was the first time they celebrated that, and we were part of that. For the nine following editions, plus the first one in 2014, we've been a part of that. It's great to be celebrating 10 years of Latino Outdoors' existence and 10 editions of Latino Conservation Week. To your question, what is Latino Outdoors? I like to frame it in the context of our three sort of flagship programs. Our first program is called Vamos Outdoors, and that's Spanglish, right? Let's go outdoors. It really speaks to, I think, our bread and butter at Latino Outdoors, and that is we organize outdoor experiences, curated outdoor experiences that are led by a volunteer network, a national volunteer network that's spread out in over 30 locations around the country and is about 200 people strong. Yeah, that could be anything from just a pleasant day at the park, at your local park, to summiting a 14er in Colorado and everything in between. That's Vamos Outdoors, our outdoor engagement program. Then the second programmatic pillar at Latino Outdoors is Yo Cuento Outdoors. Again, Spanglish, right? Yo Cuento is the Spanish phrase for I count. It also means I matter, and I tell a story. It's our storytelling and communications program, and that dovetails really nicely with Vamos Outdoors because, as you know, when you go outdoors and you are close to nature and you're camping or you're hiking, you're creating memories for yourself that you're with, and we want to share those memories as stories, right, with our audience and with our community because, in doing so, we believe that we're expanding the narrative of what it means to be an outdoor enthusiast and a lover of nature and the outdoors, and so we really want to contribute to that fuller, more rich definition of what it means to be quote-unquote outdoorsy. And then the third programmatic pillar or focus area here at Latino Outdoors is our leadership development program, and that's called Crecemos Outdoors. Crecemos is the word, the word in Spanish for we grow. We grow outdoors, and that really is our way of honoring the volunteers that power Latino through leadership development opportunities, professional development opportunities that really, we're in a position, Latino Outdoors especially, you know, over the years as we've grown to really cultivate for our volunteers, whether it be wilderness first aid certification or other outdoor leadership training to putting, connecting them with job opportunities, internships, etc., and then our broader community as well. So that's the third piece, outdoor leadership development.

WHEELER:

All right. Well, this is a wonderful rubric to kind of have a conversation around. Let's talk about the first one, getting people outdoors. As you said, Latino Outdoors has a number of chapters across the United States. Tell us more about the chapters and how they kind of relate within the Latino Outdoors organizational structure, how independent they are, the kind of programs that they devise, and how folks might be able to find out more about their own local chapter.

AVILA:

Absolutely. That's a great question. How do they fit within the Latino Outdoors organization? I like to say that we're a community first and an organization second. And even though we've grown as much as we have over 10 years, I'm really proud of the fact that we still have that sense of community across the Latino Outdoors chapters or teams around the country. The first couple groups started in California, in the Central Valley, in Los Angeles, and the Bay Area. So those were the first three. And then it just started spreading from there. Our founder, his name is Jose Gonzalez. He's still very much involved with Latino Outdoors. He's one of our biggest ambassadors and supporters. He started writing a blog, and he called it Latinos Outdoors, I think, with the S. Or maybe it was just Latino Outdoors. I'm not sure. But it was a blog. And that blog was really him expressing and conveying his passion for Latino culture and the outdoors and the intersection between those two things. And that resonated with a number of people, both within California and eventually outside of California to the point where now it's spread to the Southwest, to the Pacific Northwest. We've got a chapter in the Chicago area, East Coast. One of our most recent chapters is in Miami, Florida. So we're excited. And anyone who's interested in finding their local Latino Outdoors team or chapter can do so by going on to latinooutdoors.org, our website, and just looking under our locations. There's a map there with all sorts of information on how to connect with each of these teams around the country.

WHEELER:

Let's talk about the role that experiencing nature, getting out into nature, causes somebody to to become an advocate for nature. Right. And I imagine that that that's part of the idea behind all of these outdoor programs that, you know, outdoor sponsors, when we go to beautiful places, you want to save those beautiful places. Right. One of my friends is a Mexican-American and his family never had money growing up. But the Jackson Demonstration State Forest in Mendocino County was one of those places where his family could go and they could have virtually a free vacation, extremely cheap to camp there. And so some of his core childhood memories are going and camping at the Jackson Demonstration State Forest and being out in nature. He is now a monthly donor to EPIC. He is a great advocate for conservation. And I think of experiences like his and kind of the value that being outdoors has had in his own life to awaken an interest in environmental conservation. Can you talk more about this this this subject of getting people outdoors, gets them to become advocates?

AVILA:

Yeah, I mean, that's actually part of our theory of change that you can find on latinooutdoors.org. We very directly talk about how creating more welcoming outdoor spaces for recreation and for leisure can lead to the conservation constituency becoming grander, bigger, and more diverse, and stronger in its diversity. So that's absolutely part of what we're trying to do at Latino Outdoors. And we've got a number of conservationists who are part of the network, the volunteer network, and on staff that really want to share that perspective, right, of a conservationist with the broader community. And for us, Latino Outdoors has been a platform that we can do that with. And I'll use myself as an example. So I grew up, I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, right, right next to the LA River, which is this concrete channel, right. But I loved being outdoors as a kid. And even if it was in the city, it was just something that was just so wonderful for me, just being outside. And I grew up in the 80s, where you play until the sun went down, and you heard your parents calling you to come back in, indoors. So we really, my brothers and I, we really milked our time outdoors, even if it was in an urban setting. And fast forward later in life, you know, life's meandering twists and turns like a river, took me eventually to the tropics, to Costa Rica. I spent 12 years living in Costa Rica, doing conservation work. We were, I worked for a small nonprofit there that was focused on tropical cloud forest conservation and restoration. And we did it through like a watershed restoration lens, working with rural water districts. And it was fascinating. I didn't study this in school, right. But but it really opened up a whole new perspective for me. And I started to see the world through that environmental lens. When I came back to the United States to California in 2018, I wanted to share that, you know, with other people. And Latino Outdoors was looking at that point for a new executive director. And I was fortunate enough to come back at that time and throw my hat in the ring. And here I am. And so that is, again, just part of what we are trying to do here is really broaden the conservation community and strengthen it through diversity.

WHEELER:

And let's get to the second pillar of Latino Outdoors work, which is changing the narrative or telling a story about Latinos outdoors. I think earlier in our conversation, you said something along the lines of changing the perspective of who goes outdoors or changing our narrative about who is an environmentalist or who is an outdoors person. I imagine that that's important to Latino Outdoors because environmentalism can feel like oppressively white sometimes, or it can feel oppressively Anglo. And having talked to friends, the idea of going into these spaces can feel hostile and can discourage people from being able to enjoy the outdoors if they feel like they're an outsider in this space. So can you talk about the role of narrative in helping to make the great outdoors kind of a more welcoming place for all peoples?

AVILA:

Absolutely, Tom. Let's stop short of saying it can feel oppressively white or Anglo. I would simply say it can sometimes feel, to certain groups or communities, not relevant. As simple as that. We want to make it relevant. We want to make environmentalism and the outdoors and protecting spaces and places relevant to as many people as possible. For us to be able to do that, and by us I mean the complete, the broader conservation community, we need to speak to these different audiences. There are groups like Latino Outdoors and others who are tuned into some of these groups. We're an asset in building the environmental movement because we can speak in culturally relevant ways. We can frame the narrative around environmentalism in culturally relevant ways that will resonate with more groups and people. You want to feel welcome in these spaces. You want to feel that these outdoor places are for you. When I was in Costa Rica, there's a quote that I heard and it was by Wendell Berry. He said something along the lines of, you stand for what you stand on. That always stuck with me. It's one of my mantras. We want to make sure that everyone feels like they can stand somewhere and be welcome in these spaces so that they become protectors of these places.

WHEELER:

the Eco News Report, and we're talking with Luis Vila of Latino Outdoors about his organization's work to expand outdoor access. And not to diminish the great work of Latino Outdoors, but Latino Outdoors is part of a larger movement that is seeking to diversify outdoor recreation, environmentalism. And I think that the 2010s have seen just a wonderful growth of these groups or an expansion of these groups or creation or expansion of these groups. So we have Diversify Whitewater, Black Girls Surf. We have efforts to try to increase the acceptance of folks of kind of different body types in the outdoors that that people can enjoy hiking to, and this shouldn't be a feeling of shame. So it's really cool and exciting for me to see all this work to expand and to cultivate more folks who are going to also be my friends and my co-conspirators in this great scheme to save the planet. That might not kind of make sense to some old guard, right, that we're placing too great of an emphasis on identity. Do you have any response to somebody that thinks that we're kind of just caught up in identity politics here?

AVILA:

Absolutely. It's not about identity politics. I mean, the lesson of diversity and the importance of diversity, we just need to look to nature to understand that that is a valuable lesson, right? Ecosystems that are biodiverse are robust and resilient, and that lesson applies to people systems as well. So for me, at least, it's never been about identity politics. It's always been about sustainability, and eventually, if we can get there, becoming a thriving society, right, that is at peace with each other, with ourselves, right, amongst ourselves, and at peace with nature. And so I think to achieve that, we need diversity of thought, of approaches to conservation, socioeconomic systems, I mean, just diversity across the board. And that's a lesson that we can draw from nature itself. So that's what I would say to the old guard, is you've learned about the value of diversity from nature. Well, that applies here as well.

WHEELER:

And there's nothing that is being lost by folks who have traditionally been associated with the outdoors by expanding the kind of tent, having a bigger tent of environmentalism, right? We actually have more defenders. We have more champions for the environment when we have a larger tent. So this all Sierra Club member concept of like John Muir and the pristine nature that doesn't have humans in it. I think that that is one false, right? Humans have always been on the landscape and modifying the landscape. So this idea that we have of nature is just inherently wrong. But I think it also works against our efforts to try to conserve our planet. We need as many defenders as we can. And I should also say poll after poll have found that that Latinos, black people, all people of color are inherently more environmentally conscious than white people. So so our own conception of like what is an environmentalist is itself wrong, that all of these other communities, they care about clean water. They care about wildlife. They care about public places and the way that they interact with them might be different because of the cultural background, because of the economic background in which these people reside or grow up. But yeah, here here's for a big tent environmentalism. And I am a champion of it. And thank you, Latino outdoors. So this gets us then to kind of our third pillar of Latino tours, which is the cultivation of environmental leaders. So you said that there is some stuff like, yeah, wilderness first aid training that Latino doors helps to sponsor. But I imagine that wilderness first aid training also has another purpose to it, right? When you when you teach people these skills, they become better leaders. Can you talk about the cultivation and development of a next generation of environmental leaders and how Latino outdoors is working to set this up?

AVILA:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of synergy happening when we get one of our volunteers to become Wilderness First Aid certified, right? I mean, first of all, they lead outings for Latino Outdoors. So they're going to, going to be more prepared in, in the case that something, some of those new skills or knowledge are needed, right? Hopefully not, knock on wood, but, but that's obviously one motivation. But beyond that, as I alluded to earlier, a lot of our volunteers, our leaders are already working at conservation organizations or outdoor recreation organizations or agencies or land management entity agencies, and so Latino Outdoors, we want to serve as, we want to be a resource to them, right? Oftentimes our, our volunteer leaders find themselves as maybe the only one of in the room, right, in these, in their day jobs, and I think that organizations like affinity groups or affinity organizations like Latino Outdoors, that aside from being affinity groups, also through hard work and time, have secured resources to be able to support our members in these ways. That's what we want to be. We want to be an asset to them and, and, and, and do that so that they can continue in an upward trajectory in their professional lives. So whether it's again, first a wilderness first aid certification or first responder or a very specialized naturalist training course or, or, or, or something else, that's, we're just going to cultivate those, those opportunities and, and, and make sure that we connect those opportunities with the individual leaders for whom they are a good fit at Latino Outdoors. And so we have over 200 people on our volunteer roster. It's a lot, but it's still small enough so that, I mean, I can actually say this with, with a lot of confidence. I, I know a lot of those leaders, even if I've never met them in person, cause we're spread out around the country. I know their bios. I know what, who they work for. And, and so whenever I get opportunities thrown my way in my inbox or in other ways, asking for someone who's good at this or that, I can, I can make the connection between the leaders and, and I'm not the only here at Latino Outdoors.

WHEELER:

Well, that, that reminds me next time I'm hiring somebody for Epic, I will need to send the job posting to you so you can send it on to all the great leaders that you've helped to cultivate.

AVILA:

You can post it yourself. We have a job board that is accessible to anybody who has opportunities to share in the conservation, environmental education, and outdoor recreation arenas.

WHEELER:

Oh, very cool. All right. Well, job seekers, check out the Latino Outdoors job board. And these are kind of reinforcing parts. There are three pillars of Latino Outdoors. But I imagine when your wilderness first responder is Latino, too, it also changes our narrative about who these type of people are. And so I appreciate how all parts of the organization kind of reinforce each other. It's a it's a triangle or I guess it's not really a triangle because there are three peers. But maybe I can think of it as a triangle. It's the strongest shape, right?

AVILA:

It is the strongest shape. I believe that. And you hit the nail right on the head, Tom. And we actually expressed this on our website about the three programs and how they are complementary to each other. And it's true. When we, for example, post online on one of our social media accounts, an image of a Latina or Latino or Latine park ranger, those are some of our most popular posts, because it's not every day. It's become common these days, at least in my five-plus years with Latino Outdoors, to see those kinds of images, people of color in these positions. But they're still novel to our audience. And so by virtue of being novel, they're popular as well. And really interesting to see that.

WHEELER:

Well, just locally, I know a number of people who have kind of come through Latino Outdoors when they were going to Humboldt State University, or now called Cal Poly Humboldt, and they are in the beginning of their careers at natural resource agencies. So they are the park rangers, or they're working for friends at other land trusts or conservation non-profits. So I can very truly say I've seen the effect of Latino Outdoors even here in Humboldt. Although we have a very strong kind of connection, Humboldt and Latino Outdoors. As you said, you once lived in Arcata for a while before moving to Fresno. We have had other Latino Outdoors staff here in Humboldt. So I feel like Latino Outdoors is very rooted in Humboldt's environmental movement as well.

AVILA:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we were office mates, right?

WHEELER:

And I have to say, I learned a ton from you. Part of it was during COVID and there wasn't great time for us to overlap, but I was a young executive director and to be able to kind of do this job and to watch you do your job, I feel like I picked up a lot on how to treat employees well, how to run an organization, how to be the public face of an organization. So I owe a thank you to you too.

AVILA:

Oh, wow, Tom. Thank you so much for those generous words. It means a lot to me. Thank you. Yeah.

WHEELER:

All right, so somebody who's interested in Latino Outdoors, I think we talked about this earlier. Let's talk about how to connect with Latino Outdoors, how to find a local chapter, how to connect. If you're interested in setting up a chapter, how to find a hike, let's go into it. So what are the best resources to get people connected with your organization?

AVILA:

Absolutely. So you just alluded to the pandemic, right, which made everyone work from home, essentially, or at least not in a traditional office. Latino Outdoors was in the, had the advantage of already being a decentralized organization. We always have been. And so the way that you can connect with Latino Outdoors is online and particularly through our website, latinooutdoors.org. That is the hub for everything Latino Outdoors. From there, you can find our national social media presence and connect with us that way. You can find my email address. You can set the names and contact info for our staff, our volunteers. Not so much our volunteers. We try to shield them a little bit, right, because they are volunteers. But you can find the different regional teams, i.e. chapters, social media accounts on our locations map. So all of that is available there. You just have to do a little exploring and we do a pretty good job of keeping it updated.

WHEELER:

and we have a local Latino Outdoors chapter, it goes through kind of ebbs and flows of how many programs are being put on based on kind of how many people are, you know, in school or are wanting to connect. But if you are in Humboldt County, check out, I believe there's a Facebook page for our local Humboldt chapter. So check them out. And if you're listening to this, and if you want to become more involved, Latino Outdoors has the room for you. They want you to be part of them. So get involved, engage, and help grow the environmental movement. Luis, thank you so much for joining the Econews Report. Any last thoughts, reflections that you'd like to share with our listening audience? Well, I

AVILA:

I think you read my mind, Tom. I really want to point folks there in Humboldt to our chapter. It's a small, tiny little chapter of two members currently. It goes through those ebbs and flows as volunteer powered organizations do. But right now we have a new-ish volunteer. His name is, I believe, Sebastian, Sebastian Castillo. And recently he organized a kayaking outing in Humboldt Bay with support from Center Activities, I believe, so Cal Poly Humboldt, and so, yeah, I'm starting to see, yeah, just more, more, more activity from our chapter there in Humboldt, and we welcome anybody to be a part of that. I often like to say that if you say in your day job, or even not your day job, but just you have a personal passion for being outdoors and you want to take that to the next level, well, the Latino Outdoors platform, which offers resources and a network, a supportive network with which to do that with, may be a good avenue for you. So I hope people who are listening will look into that.

WHEELER:

Well, Luis, thank you so much for joining the Econews Report, and thank you listeners for joining the show. And you can join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.