Featured Outdoor Diversity Organization: Melanin Base Camp
Continuing our initiative to highlight organizations that promote more inclusiveness on public lands and strive to make the outdoors more accessible to everyone, in August, we are featuring Melanin Base Camp.
The goal of Melanin Base Camp is to increase the visibility of outdoorsy Black, Indigenous, People of Color, as well as LGBTQ+ people.
About Melanin Base Camp
This amazing organization aims to increase the representation of minorities in the media, in advertising and in the stories minorities tell themselves about the great outdoors.
Essentially, Melanin Base Camp is the home base of diversity in outdoor adventure sports, inspiring readers every week with new outdoor-related content from Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ adventurers.
Their blog contains dozens of stories, trip reports, adventures, and personal experiences related to complicated topics like transphobia, racism and colorism in the outdoor industry.
These sensitive subjects, from race to gender, are faced head on, but in a way that provides a safe space for all kinds of minorities. This truly is a hub for all people with marginalized identities.
Additionally, Melanin Base Camp is also behind the #diversifyoutdoors movement. DiversifyOutdoors.com is a coalition of entrepreneurs, online influencers, organizations and affinity groups that promote diversity in the outdoors and conservation.
Founder
Melanin Base Camp was founded in February 2016 by Danielle Williams, who also created Diversify Outdoors in January 2018.
Both initiatives have the purpose of increasing the presence and participation of ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ people in the outdoors.
Danielle is an African American disabled skydiver who has over 600 jumps under her belt. She graduated from Harvard and has spent ten years in the U.S. Army, including deployments in Iraq and the Philippines.
While doing her research on the presence of minorities in the outdoors, Danielle quickly realized that many BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people were already recreating outdoors, kayaking, hiking, surfing, climbing,… All things she assumed people of color didn’t do, they actually already did.
She had the insight that she wasn’t aware of this because she “had never seen images Senegalese surfers, Queer Latinx climbers or Desi skydivers.” Watching TV, she never saw any outdoor ad featuring a person of color.
So, she decided to focus on increasing the visibility of minorities in the outdoor industry, from media and blogs to advertising.
Her award-winning blog is a powerful voice for diversity in the outdoors.
Support and Donate
You can support Melanin Base Camp by purchasing a product from their online shop, or you can:
Follow Melanin Base Camp & Diversify Outdoors
You can follow Melanin Base Camp on social media like Facebook and Instagram, which are chock-full of stories, videos and experiences of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ outdoor adventurers.
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melaninbasecamp/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melaninbasecamp/
- Website (Melanin Base Camp): https://www.melaninbasecamp.com/
- Website (Diversify Outdoors): https://www.diversifyoutdoors.com/
You can also share your own experiences by using the hashtags #melaninbasecamp and #diversifyoutdoors.
If you’d like to tell your own story on the Melanin Base Camp website, you can submit it here.
You Can Help Bridge the Diversity Gap in the Outdoor Industry
An overview of diversity and inclusivity organizations we have supported can be found here. This document contains information about what these organizations are doing and how you can donate to them directly.
We also set up a submission form you can use if you know an organization that’s working to make the outdoors more diverse and inclusive. If you want to see them supported, please submit via this form.