Mission Statement

We inspire, connect, and engage Latino communities in the outdoors and embrace cultura y familia as part of the outdoor narrative, ensuring our history, heritage, and leadership are valued and represented.

Vision Statement

A world where all Latino communities enjoy nature as a safe, inclusive, and welcoming place – a world where the outdoors is a place to share and celebrate stories, knowledge, and culture, while growing leadership and an active community of Latino outdoor users, mentors, and stewards.

Core Values

The efforts of Latino Outdoors are guided by our commitment to familia, comunidad, cultura, access, service, diversity, and life-long learning.

About

Latino Outdoors is a Latine-led organization that supports a national community of leaders in outdoor recreation, conservation and environmental education. With an eye towards celebrating and expanding the Latine outdoor experience and bolstering the broader outdoor movement, we provide leadership, mentorship, and professional development opportunities and serve as a platform for amplifying oft-overlooked cultural connections and narratives. Latino Outdoors is a space for our comunidades to be present, share our voices, and showcase how an ethic of conservation and roots in nature have been deeply embedded in la cultura Latina for generations. The programmatic pillars of Latino Outdoors are: outdoor experiences, outdoor narratives, and outdoor leadership.

The Need

In 2009, while a graduate student, José González asked himself the following questions:

• Where are the top Latino-serving organizations?
• What are the top conservation organizations?
• Is there any overlap between the two?

The answers to José’s queries demonstrated an unmet need, motivating him to create LO in 2013 as an online blog and networking platform for members of Latinx communities interested in outdoor recreation, environmental education, and/or conservation.

José shared his ideas with participants in this new network, and together they began to grow the community, while also building the foundation for LO as an organization. Since 2014, LO has been providing outdoor experiences to families and youth through its Vamos Outdoor program, growing from a California-based organization to a national movement powered by volunteers.

The Latino population is one of the fastest growing demographics in the United States, but among the most underrepresented in conservation, outdoor recreation, and environmental education. In a short period Latino Outdoors has expanded from a California based organization to an international volunteer movement. The original model is replicable and allows individuals to include their unique passions in each outing location and at each event. Through this network, volunteer leaders support each other in leading responsible recreation, providing mentoring activities to youth, expanding outdoor access through experiential programming, and partnering with other organizations for supplemental education components.

Statement of Inclusivity:

Latino Outdoors strives to make the outdoors a safe and welcoming place for all people, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, ability, language, and nationality. This extends beyond our outdoor programming to our core values as an organization, especially one that understands the history and power of public policy and legislation in protecting public lands and landscapes that we enjoy today, but that many times came at the expense of communities that were marginalized and displaced. Latino Outdoors welcomes the full spectrum of people and stands in solidarity with all individuals, organizations, and societies that uphold this value.

We recognize our use of the gendered characteristics of the Spanish language. The use of “Latino” in “Latino Outdoors” is a descriptor of the outdoors, not a reference to Latino males in the outdoors. We acknowledge the intersectional fluidity of language and identity, and we use Latina, Latine, Latinx, and Latino freely and fluidly to refer to engagement and experiences in the outdoors by members of comunidades latinas.