Partnership At Its Best

In case you missed this great interview with Ayinde Summers from the Greening Youth Foundation, here it is:

Partnerships with organizations such as the Greening Youth Foundation provide essential opportunities to combine Leave No Trace with personal and professional development. The Greening Youth Foundation provides interactive, hands-on programs for young people to develop a deeper relationship with nature, with others and with themselves, resulting in healthier individuals, communities and environments. Leave No Trace skills and ethics play a critical role in their work.

After a Leave No Trace training with these young adults, Catherine Smith talked with Ayinde Summers, the Senior Director of Programs and Training from Greening Youth Foundation, about the relevance of Leave No Trace in his work, what he is trying to accomplish with his program, and why his long-term personal membership to Leave No Trace is important to him.

Ayinde Summers: Leave No Trace is important because it allows us to have something to hold onto around culture. The simple principle of leaving things as you found them allows for future generations to have similar access.

Catherine Smith: For high school kids and young adults, what is most compelling about Leave No Trace?

AS: A lot of people are not having intentional conversations with young people about the Leave No Trace ethics and principles that are really kind of basic. Adults get it, but with all the media kids have access to… you don’t see them outside. You don’t see children riding bikes. So Leave No Trace actually engages them outside and they have conversations and actually interact with people in that context.

CS: What teaching technique works best with that age group?

AS: Experiential education. I may be partial.

CS: What do you typically teach this age group about Leave No Trace?

AS: I love the ethic. So when I introduce the theme (of Leave No Trace), I talk about it just as ethics. So then there are tons of principles to pull from. Being outdoors, Leave No Trace is a wonderful ethic to connect to multiple cultures, to multiple groups and greater understanding of the world.

CS: What are your desired outcomes for the kids? Do you hope they become more interested in Leave No Trace and teach it?

AS: This has never been done before with this particular group of young folks. Typically what I do is get our students to a place where they can take it back to their communities. Leave No Trace is the last thing we train them in before they go into the Wilderness because I want it to be fresh in their minds. I want them to see that in every area it really works, so, again, they can take it back to their communities.

CS: Why is Leave No Trace important to you?

AS: I’ve been doing wilderness work for about ten years and the impact I’ve seen is sad. To walk across a mountain ridge that my mother or father may have walked across and it looks completely different because there is a Cheetos bag or a tire with chrome and aluminum is sad. So for me, it’s an ethic that I hold near and dear.
I’m a member of Leave No Trace because the organization’s impact has been great. The communities, the outreach on the internet has been good…Being able to get people to come together around a subject, particularly this environmental issue, is really important.