Urban Nature Partners PDX

Mission & Values

Mission
Urban Nature Partners PDX (UNP) empowers youth from historically marginalized Portland populations by building connections to nature and community through long-term mentoring relationships. 

Values
Equity: We recognize that the more marginalized residents of Portland traditionally had less access to urban greenspaces as a result of racial, cultural, and economic barriers. 

UNP actively dismantles these barriers by developing leadership and change-making skills within BIPOC and other marginalized populations. We also leverage ally privileges to increase equity, inclusion, and justice in the outdoors and nature-based programming and professions. 

Relationships: In facilitating meaningful connections between people and nature, we recognize that collaborative relationships are essential to UNP’s impact: internally within UNP, within the communities we serve, and with other organizations that provide outdoor opportunities in Portland’s urban greenspaces. 

UNP leverages these long-term relationships by building trust through transparency and integrity, as well as sharing decision-making leading to mutual benefits to further promote inclusion and belonging in urban greenspaces. 

Youth Empowerment: We recognize that traditional environmental education curriculums have been biased toward the dominant class, and that youth from marginalized communities have often been stigmatized by perceived deficits and risks. 

UNP instead builds upon each youth’s inherent capabilities, strengths, resiliency, family history, and culture to amplify their voice and agency within outdoor spaces and organizations. This includes increased agency and involvement within UNP and appropriate partners over time as they grow in long-term relationships. 

Description

Urban Nature Partners PDX fills a gap in services for youth from 4th grade to beyond in the Portland Metro area by providing access, resources, and opportunities in local greenspaces that are relationship based, family inclusive, culturally responsive, and long-term. Instead of prescribing environmental curriculums, we utilize an informal education model that allows each youth to develop and pursue their own outdoor interests that challenge themselves physically, emotionally, and intellectually at their own pace, all in a supportive environment of adults and peers.

The UNP-PDX program model is "narrow and deep"—this means serving a small number of youth for 2-7 years at a time with a wide variety of tiered services that grow with them, thus fostering an evolving set of relationships with their mentor, staff, and peers. These long-term relationships with natural spaces and other humans create a context for other "one off" experiences such as going to a week of Outdoor School with their class that makes them more meaningful and likely to be repeated as an important part of their lives as they mature. Including family members and youth enrolled in other relationship-based local programs then creates a ripple effect of extending the program benefits to others in a more meaningful context. 

By serving youth for two or more years at a critical stage in their cognitive and social development, we act as the front-end of a pathway to outdoor leadership opportunities for adolescents in our area. This can lead to careers in the outdoors and natural science, as well as create lifelong recreational users, stewards, and advocates for natural spaces. Providing experiences for the whole family, in turn, increases the chance that they will have the confidence, knowledge, and desire to spend time outdoors beyond our program. 

The years of COVID restrictions also clearly illustrated the value of time outdoors for the mental and physical health of youth—a time when a mentor showing up to the door to take a masked and social-distanced walk around the neighborhood might have been the only thing to look forward to the whole week. The increasingly negative impact of screen time and social media algorithms targeting young people are also countered by our program, where adults and youth alike leave phones in the car to experience nature together in real time. Furthermore, the backlash against immigrants and DEI initiatives is felt deeply in the communities we serve, further highlighting the importance of having existing trusted relationships and spaces in which young people and families know they will always be welcome and valued. 

As a very small program, we depend on a local community of public and nonprofit partners who share our values and diversity to provide our youth with superlative and varied opportunities. We leverage the great work already being done by these partners in leading programs in local greenspaces, offering day and overnight outdoor camp opportunities, and providing leadership and paid summer internship programming for older teens. This not only creates a pathway of opportunities for youth, but ensures that partners increase their reach into communities that are often underserved and underrepresented in the outdoors. 

Contact Kristin Bowling, Founder/Executive Director urbannaturepartnerspdx@gmail.com (541) 281-7162 Urban Nature Partners PDX

Population Served
We serve low-income youth ages 9-16 and their families from historically marginalized Portland neighborhoods, the majority of whom are BIPOC and/or immigrants. We also partner with other mentoring or relationship-based youth-serving Portland area programs to take mentor pairs and families with us on joint outdoor group outings.

Services Offered
We provide basic outdoor clothing and supplies, information about and the provision of transportation to neighborhood natural areas, and adult guidance to remove barriers to youth and families accessing greater Portland’s superlative network of urban greenspaces. 

Our program provides a tiered set of experiences designed to build comfort and belonging, outdoor knowledge and competencies, and leadership potential for youth growth. This includes: 

• Weekly or bi-weekly neighborhood outings in urban greenspaces driven by the interests of youth, involving 1:1 youth-adult mentor pairs (ages 9-14) and 3:1 youth-adult small groups (ages 13-16).
• 18 family-inclusive, half-day group outings per year in the greater Portland area (and occasionally the mountains in Oregon and southern Washington). There are three categories: recreational to try a new activity, educational with a partner program guide, or stewardship activity. We also occasionally partner with other Portland-based mentoring organizations on joint group outings.
• Full scholarships, application support, preparation, transportation, and needed gear for overnight camps and teen leadership programs with trusted local partners. 

Cost to Participate
Participation costs to enrolled youth and their families are entirely free and funded by grants and donations. This includes outdoor clothing and gear, transportation, food, and fees and tuition for day-and-overnight camps and group outings (which consists of pairs, small groups, and family-inclusive groups) with trusted partners in the Portland area. 

Mentors volunteer their time. UNP pays all their activity expenses, provides pro-deal discounts on outdoor gear, and reimburses transportation costs in their private vehicles for faraway excursions (though mentors do pay for gas for weekly/bi-weekly outings with their mentee(s). 

Staff Composition
One full-time Executive Director 
One full-time bicultural/bilingual Spanish Assistant Director 
One part-time contract Development Coordinator 
One part-time contract Accountant 

Urban Nature Partners PDX in the Media

KBOO Interview
Listen: Urban Nature Partners

The Intertwine
Read: In Awe of Nature

The Intertwine
Read: The Power of Outdoor Mentoring