Her Odyssey is powered by a community of curious and forward-thinking people invested in seeing the world through different lenses.
The ‘Share Your Story’ Campaign is a fundraising effort for the Her Odyssey team and a way for our community to both support the adventurers and share a piece of your own story. We have created options of T-shirts, tank tops, or Youth shirts, ranging in size from XS to 4XL and once the initial shipment goes out, we will share the stories with our friends and followers.
ORDER YOUR ‘SHARE YOUR STORY’ SHIRT TODAY
Your support and giving is what keeps us going and we are proud to live in that flow. Recognizing we are not the end point but rather a link in the larger story. We have been proud over the years to pay 10% of what we are given forward to individuals and organizations we see at work on the ground, pursuing big goals by small and persistent steps.
So we are excited to announce that WeGotNext are the pay it forward recipients from our ‘Share Your Story’ shirt campaign.
Their mission is:
WeGotNext amplifies individual stories of adventure and activism from communities that have been underrepresented in outdoor and environmental spaces.Through our Ambassadorship Program and in-community partnerships, we showcase the full spectrum of the environmental movement.
We picked this organization after much conversation and consideration. We have been working these past years and been more intentional these past months about understanding and integrating DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] into our work and a part of that means evaluating where we give.
Most of our exposure to under-served populations and therefore our focus has come from walking across South America, where we were immersed in very different cultural environments and witnessed a different kind of need. A need first world constructs often fail to address. Shifting back to a US based perspective and re-drawing these fronts of progress has required some work. Going further back and more personal than even that has introduced me to another new term, ‘unlearning.’
What I am trying to say is, that as white women who are fortunate enough to CHOOSE to live like this and take on something like a human powered traverse of the Americas, we know we are privileged. We feel it every day out there and frankly, there are times we have staked our lives on it. That our friends of different skin colors not only do not live with this benefit but in fact carry a number of other burdens sounds, frankly, exhausting.
Reading Grace Anderson’s adamant and straight forward piece “We Don’t Want Your Hashtags, We Want Action“, and Scott Briscoe’s Q&A and beautiful story about his daughter captured my attention and helped me make sense of where those lines lie.
While WeGotNext are a new initiative (this year ushers in their inaugural group of Ambassadors) several of our friends who are BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color] were happy to speak on behalf of the integrity of these individuals and their work. Even if you are not in a position to support financially, it is worth clicking through their Ambassadors and subscribing to their platforms to watch the adventures unfold!
I reached out to Briscoe to get some insight into what they are looking at in terms of budget and he shared a breakdown of what their initial budget projections look like as they get the project off the ground:
Programming-Year 1 $300k (Covid adjustment to $100k) . . . bonding, workshops, travel, lodging-Year 2 $300k . . . expeditions/projects, documentation (photographers, film makers)-Year 3 $420k ($120k for 3rd year current cohort and $300k for 1st year of upcoming cohort) the budget for 3rd year will be supplemented with speaker fees,Operations-$282,500/year (Covid adjustment for 2020 FY, $150k)
I was mentored into this outdoor lifestyle and have been fortunate over the years to introduce and mentor others into the wild places. Being taught how to survive, even in the most austere places on the planet, and to be led there by people who made me feel safe was a big part of how well I’ve integrated it into my life. Thus, we are excited to contribute as this project gets off the ground. They have started a three year program aimed at educating, supporting, facilitating, and then rounding ambassadors back into mentoring positions.
Her Odyssey exists to foster personal growth through travel. We seek to lead by example, inspiring others to pursue their own passions. We believe this builds bridges between communities and connects individuals through presence, actions, and stories. Thus, we are proud to support the work of WeGotNext.
