This project will provide high quality outdoor educational experiences to underserved youth, focusing on stewardship, resilience, accessibility, and inclusion

Experience learning, a community-based non-profit located in the potomac highlands of west virginia, will partner with schools and community organizations at the bottom of the chesapeake BAY watershed to offer backcountry experiences in pendleton county, a marginalized west virginia county at the top of the chesapeake BAY watershed. Participants will be provided opportunities to earn community service hours, learn about watershed health and make upstream and downstream connections through hands-on stream analysis, and have access to safe and inclusive outdoor recreation activities in backcountry environments. The project targets low-income and black, indigenous, and people of color communities at the bottom of the chesapeake BAY watershed in washington D.C., northern virginia, and baltimore.participants will embark on a week-long program, as they start in their hometown at the bottom of the watershed and travel up to the headwater streams in the mountains of west virginia. The program will blend our wilderness-based learning model by taking participants on an immersive backcountry expedition where they will learn the foundational outdoor skills needed to move confidently through the new landscape. We will pull scientific lessons based on hands-on learning and student driven inquiry from our community-based learning model, and infuse them into the expedition as we learn about the health and ecology of our forests, streams, and mountains. And we will partner with local conservation agencies like the united states forest service for a stewardship project on public lands to provide an opportunity to connect with outdoor professionals, and give back in a meaningful way. This approach has been poked, prodded, and fine-tuned over the course of our more than fifty-year organizational history, and we wish to expand our circle to provide this experience to more diverse underserved youth at the bottom of the chesapeake BAY watershed, focusing on populations that otherwise could not afford an experience like this. We believe the way to have the greatest impact on internal motivation is through shared authentic, positive, supportive, fun, and relevant experiences in the natural world. This project will provide full tuition and transportation to a minimum of forty low-income and black, indigenous, and people of color youth communities at the bottom of the chesapeake BAY watershed in washington D.C., northern virginia, and baltimore during the 2024 2025 school year. The initial pilot of this project has already been completed during june of 2023 when experience learning partnered with dunbar high school and the prime ability bike program located in washington, D.C. IT is our hope to not only continue this partnership but to strengthen IT and scale IT so we can provide this meaningful opportunity to more underserved youth residing at the bottom of the chesapeake BAY watershed in northern virginia, washington, D.C. And baltimore, maryland.