Mission

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.

The mission of Latino Outdoors is advanced through our three programs.

Team

The people powering the programs of Latino Outdoors include a national network of over 200 volunteers, a staff dedicated to supporting this network, a volunteer Advisory Board, and our Founder.

Vamos Outdoors (Let’s Go Outdoors)

This program is centered on fostering outdoor engagement by Latine and other communities through group outings, outdoor activities in collaboration with other organizations, initiatives that encourage independent outdoor participation, and best practices in outdoor engagement shared through LO’s online communications channels. Activities are largely family-friendly and free for participants. They include day hikes, camping, biking, climbing, picnicking, piñata parties in the park, and more.

Latino Outdoors was founded in 2013 with outdoor programming beginning in earnest in 2014 (California’s Central Valley, San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles). Over the years, our national network of volunteers/leaders, now numbering more than 200 and present in over 30 locations spanning the U.S. from east to west, has delivered over 1,400 outings for more than 28,000 participants. More than half of that has taken place from 2022 onward. Over a quarter of LO outing participants are children and youths. Over 80% of outings include participants attending together with members of their family and more than 75% include the participation of someone experiencing the activity for the first time.

Yo Cuento Outdoors (I Count/I Matter/I Tell a Story Outdoors)

The objective of LO’s storytelling and communications program is to expand the collective narrative of outdoor engagement so that it is a more rich and complete story of the diverse community of people who love and care for the outdoors. Images, stories, and other content are shared on Latino Outdoors’ growing online communications platforms, which include social media channels with a current combined following of 110,000+ (and thousands more on LO’s regional social media channels) and latinooutdoors.org, with more than 350,000 visitors and over 900,000 views.

Crecemos Outdoors (We Grow Outdoors)

Under this program, LO supports our volunteers (and broader LO community) with training and leadership development opportunities, networking spaces, and resources for advancing professionally.  Examples include sponsorship with wilderness first aid certification, other outdoor skills training, and access to our Jobs+ board of opportunities, where more than 6,000 jobs, internships, fellowships, and scholarships in outdoor-related fields have been shared.

Inter-Programmatic Synergy

The programmatic priorities of Latino Outdoors are: outdoor experiences, outdoor narratives, and outdoor leadership. Our three flagship programs complement each other; the success of one elevates the others. Vamos Outdoors fosters outdoor engagement, which leads to personal stories of connection to the outdoors. Those stories are amplified through Yo Cuento Outdoors, reaching wider audiences and inspiring new and renewed outdoor engagement. In turn, Vamos program participants and Yo Cuento audience members often become inspired to join LO’s volunteer network, where they have the opportunity to grow and evolve their outdoor leadership capacity through Crecemos Outdoors while increasing the impact of Vamos and Yo Cuento Outdoors.