Resources
GirlVentures’ provide an abundance of tools and teachings as part of our programs. To take our support a step further, we’ve gathered a series of resources for families, friends, and fans of GirlVentures. Discover downloadable and online tools as well as other organizations working toward greater inclusivity and equity for youth in the outdoors.
DOWNLOADABLE RESOURCES | ONLINE RESOURCES | OUTDOOR PROGRAMS FOR GIRLS
OTHER PROGRAMS FOR GIRLS | FOR BOYS | ALL GENDER CAMPS |BLACK LIVES MATTER
DOWNLOADABLE RESOURCES
Recipes for the Field: A downloadable cookbook of delicious recipes for the trail, developed especially for GirlVentures’ summer programs.
Leave No Trace: A handy printout of the seven “Leave No Trace” principles. Take it with you on your next adventure to minimize the environmental impact of recreational activities.
Junior Wildlife Ranger Native Plant Guide: A scavenger hunt like activity to get young folks exploring nature and earning Junior Wildlife Badges badges along the way.
ONLINE RESOURCES
Girls & Youth
90 Self Esteem Resources for Girls: Includes articles, books, apps, podcasts and videos for girls of all different ages. There are also additional resources for parents and adults to help build confidence, teach self-love, and encourage high self-esteem in girls.
Alliance for Girls: A network of organizations that support young women and girls in California.
About Face: A San Francisco-based organization that provides tools and resources to analyze media influence on girls and supports healthy body image.
Gender Spectrum: This group provides resources and information to create gender sensitive and inclusive environments for children and youth.
Girl Geeks: A site that contains resources for girls interested in technology and science.
Girls Inc: A national organization offering programs and resources to empower girls.
Girls Leadership: Programs and online content to build girls’ leadership skills.
Girls Outdoor Resources: SF State University Professor Nina Roberts maintains a directory of outdoor programs for girls and related resources.
Junior Wildlife Rangers: A hub for Ranger programs around the country, Junior Wildlife Rangers propels childhood curiosity into lasting environmental stewardship. Through an interactive approach to environmental education, the program cultivates an appreciation of our public lands system and the outdoors.
A Mighty Girl: Offers girls and their parents the world's largest collection of books, toys and movies for smart, confident, and courageous girls.
New Moon Girls: This site offers great resources for younger girls.
Oasis for Girls: Partners with girls and young women from under-resourced communities.
Powered by Girl: This online magazine is created by girls for girls.
Scarleteen: Since 1998, this site has supported millions of young people seeking sexuality and relationship information, health tips, advice and support.
They2ze: An interactive smartphone app that connects transgender-spectrum youth (TSY) and their providers to inclusive health services and peer support networks.
Equity & Inclusion
Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture: While white supremacy culture affects us all, harms us all, and is toxic to us all, it does not affect, harm, and violate us in the same way. Our experience of white supremacy culture and our navigation of white supremacy culture is very different based on who we are and our lived experience, our race, our class, our gender, our sexuality, our religion, etc. Understanding the characteristics can help up recognize our behaviors that uphold and maintain them.
From Ally to Accomplice: A guide developed to support white people to act constructively to advance racial justice.
Avarna: This site that brings together resources related to environmental justice, outdoor access and social justice.
Code Switch: An NPR podcast that features journalists of color and their guests discussing the overlapping themes of race, ethnicity, and culture, how they play out in our lives and communities.
Detour Spotting: An article for white people doing anti-racist work to help identify road blocks to being effective allies and identify behaviors that can be unconsciously harmful.
Latino Outdoors: This Latinx-led organization is working to create a national community of leaders in conservation and outdoor education.
Outdoor Afro: This cutting-edge network celebrates and inspires African American connections and leadership in nature. With nearly 80 leaders in 30 states from around the country, the organization connect thousands of people to outdoor experiences every year.
Straight for Equality: A downloadable guide to help straight allies understand their role in supporting and advocating for LGBTQ people, and provides learning and resources to support the move from just feeling supportive to actively being supportive.
Youth Outside: This Oakland-based organization is working to ensure that the lived experience of all youth is honored as part of the outdoor experience. Youth Outside provides grantmaking, capacity-building, training, and resources to promote healthy lives and inspire future champions of the planet.
Closing the Gender Gap: A Guide for Women in STEM: Covers the issues women in STEM face and how to close the gender gap and promote equality in STEM. The guide also features links to trusted organizations supporting women in underrepresented fields and scholarships opportunities that are specific to women.
Confronting Prejudice: How to Protect yourself and Help Others
Outdoor Access & Environmental Justice
Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT): BAWT supports teachers and youth workers with training, gear, funding, and community to help get youth outdoors.
Children and Nature Network (C&NN): C&NN is building a global movement to increase equitable access to nature so that children and natural places can thrive. The network shares evidence-based resources, supports scaling of innovative solutions, and drives policy change.
For the Wild: This podcast provides a forum to discuss critical ideas of our time and parlay them into action for the regeneration of natural communities.
iNaturalist: This smartphone app helps you identify the plants and animals around you by connecting you with a community of over 750,000 scientists and naturalists. By recording and sharing your observations, you can participate in generating research quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. iNaturalist is a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.
Patagonia Action Works: This site connects committed individuals to organizations working on environmental issues in their communities. With Action Works, it’s now possible for anyone to discover and connect with environmental action groups and get involved with their work.
The Wilderness Society: A teaching curriculum developed in collaboration with indigenous consultants to help educators, youth leaders and government agencies share the full story of public lands.
Guide To Enjoying National Parks Responsibly: A resource that includes a list of the physical and mental health benefits of spending time in nature, an interactive map showing highlights and useful insights into the top national parks in the US, and useful tips such as LNT principles, camping and wildlife safety, and fire prevention awareness.
OUTDOOR PROGRAMS FOR GIRLS
Brown Girl Surf
Brown Girl Surf works to build a more diverse, environmentally reverent, and joyful women’s surf culture by increasing access to surfing, cultivating community, amplifying the voices of women of color surfers, and taking care of the earth. The organization offers surfing and mentorship programs for girls starting at age nine.
Girls Outdoor Leadership Development
Gold’s programs are for adventurous young women ages 11–18. Amidst the beauty of nature or in the climbing gym, girls work together to develop leadership skills, have fun, and dare to do new things. The 7–22 day summer experiences include backpacking, rock climbing, art, music, backcountry cooking, river rafting and yoga – all with time to hang out and make great friends. You don’t need equipment, but you should possess a desire to try new things yourself and challenge yourself in body, mind, and spirit.
Chysalis Girls Adventures Chrysalis Girls was started by a former GirlVentures program manager. The mission is to empower girls with confidence, courage and compassion through outdoor adventures. They offer programs for girls in 4th grade and up.
Girls On The Run
A nationwide running program for girls in 3rd-8th grades that teaches life skills through dynamic, conversation-based lessons and running.
Inspiring Girls Expeditions
Inspiring Girls expeditions leads unique, free, wilderness science education programs for high school girls. Each summer a team of 8-9 teenage girls and 3 instructors spend 12 days exploring and learning about glaciers and the alpine landscape of the pacific northwest.
She Jumps
A skiing and outdoor skills development organization that works with girls starting at age six. She jumps fosters the participation of women and girls in outdoor activities to build confidence, leadership, and connection to nature and community.
Tree Frog Treks
A co-ed environmental education program that enables kids to explore science and practice critical thinking through hands-on experiments and outdoor adventures, inspiring a love of nature and learning.
Venture Out
This organization offers backpacking and wilderness programs for lgbtq+ people of all ages, including specific programs for girls and young women.
Women’s Wilderness
Outdoor programs for women and girls, based in Boulder, Colorado.
OTHER PROGRAMS FOR GIRLS
Alexa Café All-Girls Tech Camp
In the male-dominated tech world we live in, Alexa Cafe is a breath of fresh air. This all-girls tech camp for ages 10-15 features courses in coding, filmmaking, photography, programming, as well as game and web design. At the Oakland and Palo Alto locations, girls build leadership and entrepreneurship skills in an environment where technology isn’t intimidating. There is also an overnight camp option at the Mills College Oakland location.
Integrating design, engineering, serious skills and social justice, Girls Garage programs equip girls with the confidence and tools to build anything they can imagine and to grow alongside one another and their communities.
Girls Rock! Camp aims to get young girls, many who have never even played an instrument before, to rock. Participants will suddenly find themselves behind the drums, thrashing out on guitar, or screaming behind the mic. After a few days of music instruction, they’re on a stage, rocking out and throwing the horns in front of an audience at a real music venue. Some Girls Rock! camps also offer yoga and self-defense classes.
Girls Who Code is for the future computer scientists and engineers of the world. Their summer immersion programs put these techies face-to-face with female engineers and entrepreneurs to see what it takes to make it as a young woman in tech. Over the course of seven intense weeks, campers dive into robotics, web design, and mobile development.
Radical Monarchs is an organization dedicated to creating opportunities for girls of color to form fierce sisterhood, celebrate their identities and contribute radically to their communities.
A global leader and pioneer in creating a more positive and inclusive skateboarding community, Skate Like a Girl offers programs for girls in the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest.
OUTDOOR PROGRAMS FOR BOYS
Brothers on the Rise is an Oakland-based organization which responsibly empowers male youth to achieve individual success, develop healthy relationships and contribute to a more just and equitable society. Their programs include Trail Brothers, an environmental education initiative that connects male youth to nature through hiking, camping and other forms of outdoor exploration.
Boys Outdoor Leadership Development
BOLD Mountain School is an outdoor education program for adventurous young men ages 11–18. Out there in the wild blue yonder, boys work together to develop leadership skills that will help them succeed in life, whatever path they choose. The 7–22 day wilderness experiences include backpacking, rock climbing, fishing, and just enough goofing off to make sure boys have the time of their life.
This program is a bilingual (Spanish) nature adventure program in Corralitos, CA. They strive to help youth understand and value our relationship with nature, respect human diversity, and learn life skills like problem solving, resiliency, and team communication. They offer various California wilderness overnight camps for boys ages 9 to 16.
Boys Only Wild Sky Adventure Camp
This overnight camp in Washington State provides young explorers the chance to swim, hike, bike, raft, and kayak in the Wild Sky Wilderness and Cascade foothills. The program incorporates leadership activities, and encourages boys to make safe decisions, evaluate their own strengths and those of the group, and communicate effectively. For boys ages 13 to 16.
ALL GENDER CAMPS
At this camp, kids experience the power of outdoor adventure. Avid4 Adventure summer camps teach pre-K–12th graders of all levels to climb, paddle, bike, hike and thrive in the outdoors. Experienced instructors build campers’ outdoors skills and confidence they can use at camp and beyond, launching them into a lifetime of empowering adventure.
A project of Flourish Agenda, Inc., Camp Akili is a five-day residential personal development and leadership summer camp in the Bay Area, for African American youth ages 14-18. Serving youth for over 25 years, Camp Akili sparks critical thinking, fosters personal transformation, and strengthens cultural appreciation.
For over 30 years, Camp Chrysalis has helped young people, ages 8 to 17, explore the rich and diverse natural environments of California. Living among redwoods, tidepools, marshes and mountains, campers cultivate an ethic of respect and responsibility for the ecologies that support life on earth. Leaving from Berkeley, each summer we lead sessions at our camps beneath the redwoods in Big Sur, between the tides of the Mendocino coast, and high in the Sierra Nevada (including a backpacking session for older campers).
Everyday at Coastal Camp is an opportunity for adventure and discovery in the outdoors. Participate in games, beach time, hikes, arts & crafts, scavenger hunts, and more in the Marin Headlands! Grades K-9. Daily Shuttles from San Francisco, Mill Valley, and Sausalito.
Environmental Traveling Companions (ETC)
ETC makes the joy and challenge of outdoor adventures accessible to people with disabilities and under-resourced youth, inspiring self-confidence, connection to nature, and stewardship of the environment. ETC offers rafting, kayaking, and sea kayaking trips in Northern California.
Based in Oakland, the Mosaic Project works toward a peaceful future by uniting children of diverse backgrounds, providing them with essential community building skills, and empowering them to become peacemakers. The Outdoor Project is The Mosaic Project’s principal program and brings together 4th and 5th grade classes from different communities for a profound weeklong experience in nature. Their evidence-based, social-emotional learning curriculum is designed to address issues of difference, build self-esteem, and inspire inclusion.
National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS)
NOLS is a nonprofit global wilderness school that builds bold leaders by providing the environment and training to help you discover your full potential. NOLS operates trainings and wilderness expeditions in classrooms close to home and in remote wild areas around the world.
A youth camp in Maine that inspires and cultivate new generations of global leaders in communities divided by conflict, both in the US and around the world.
Urban Adventure Camps are exactly what the name implies. Every morning, campers between the ages of 8 and 15 meet at Rockridge BART in Oakland and set off on fun and information-packed trips around the Bay Area. Destinations include the de Young Museum, Angel Island, the USS Hornet, and others.
Youth Empowered (YEA) Camp is a life-changing week-long overnight camp with sessions in Santa Cruz, CA, as well as Oregon and Upstate New York. YEA Camp is for youth who want to change the world! Campers ages 12-17 choose a social issue they want to work on, such as the environment, LGBT rights, racism, animal welfare, or domestic violence. Throughout the week they build their confidence, build concrete skills, make incredible like-minded friends and leave with an action plan to make a difference on the cause of their choice when they go home.