Outdoor Empowerment is dedicated to providing alternatives to violence, environmental awareness, and empowerment skills in an outdoor setting for urban community members. OE takes adventure outings one step further and focuses on the process of the 3 Es - experience, education, and environment during our outings/workshops. The foundation of OE's mission and its activities is rooted in the theory of ecopedagogy, inspired by the work of Paulo Freire. Ecopedagogy is an educational theory based on the process of teaching and sharing the awareness of social injustices and the need to protect the environment.
General Principles of Ecopedagogy - from Dr. Richard Kahn
Ecopedagogy’s aim is to realize the planetary peace, happiness, justice, and beauty that would be manifested by sustainable social and cultural relations between the peoples of the Earth.
Ecopedagogy recognizes that sustainability is not being realized because, in large part, it represents the antithesis to the political, economic, and cultural status quo of the powerful forces now fueling the growth of a globalized mono-society.
Ecopedagogy involves mounting creative and emancipatory political action based in formative dialogue across a wide range of interested parties, the rigorous critique of society and its political economy, and learning from the standpoints of the oppressed. This translates into the process of the art of listening to and speaking with a collective of oppositional voices.
Ecopedagogy involves understanding both education as politics and politics as education, which is to say that for the transformation towards sustainability, there is a politics of education just as there must be an education of the political.
Ecopedagogy is unabashedly utopian – not in the sense of idealistic daydreaming about the possibility of another sort of world, but rather ecopedagogy is uncompromising in its refusal to accept the suffering of this one. Thus, Ecopedagogy recognizes as anticipatory of a future sustainable society those social, cultural, and political projects that, in however limited a fashion, now alleviate suffering and aggression by working for the forces of life and lasting peace.
Ecopedagogy seeks planetarity but also regionality. We must recognize ourselves as earthlings, with all beings representing our brothers and sisters, and yet sound ecological practice will result from bioregional acts and understandings of our location.
Ecopedagogy is anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-sexist, and anti-speciesist. It is against the ranking of oppressions, and instead seeks to understand the complex ways in which various forms of oppression co-originate or intersect due to common causes. Yet, it also recognizes that in any given instance, some forms of oppression may be more primary than others, and so understanding how multiple levels of oppression arise is equally important.
Ecopedagogy can and must occur in numerous points of struggle -- in governmental and non-governmental institutions, in universities and colleges as well as secondary and elementary schools, in grassroots activist organizations, and the public at large – and each sector will face different challenges and require different objectives as part of a broad-based movement for ecologically sound social transformation. Sometimes this will require emphasis upon theory, other times practice.
Three characteristics that make us unique from the rest of the outdoor educational organizations is 1) we have a commitment to social justice and empowerment for our participants, 2) all the trainers and advisors are formal teachers with a focus on environmental education and conflict transformation, and 3) we are highly skilled outdoor instructors.
We also incorporate what we like to call the 5 Ss into everything that we do:
1. Safety - Safety is always first in any activity we organize.
2. Simplicity - We strive to be as low-impact on our surroundings as possible, keeping to the 3 Rs: recycle, reduce, reuse, from everything we throw away to the gear we use.
3. Sustainability - Knowing that our actions have an impact on the environment around us, we aim for conscious and sustainable choices, from the vehicles we drive to the food we eat.
4. Service - Our mission is to provide our skills to the public in order that our participants will be empowered to give back to their own communities.
5. Social Justice - Last but not least, we believe that everything we do must foster social justice, whether that is providing free education or teaching respect for diversity.
**We do not discriminate or limit our invitations; we are open to all individuals no matter what race, gender, sexual orientation, spiritual belief, or ability.
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