Young Women Empowered

About

Y-WE Nature Connections is a program centered around encouraging BIPOC girls and gender-expansive youth ages 13-19 to form relationships with the natural world and one another. This is accomplished through weekend adventures that teach survival skills—physical and emotional— and provide opportunities for environmental stewardship and leadership.

Categories Program BIPOC Children & Youth LGBTQIA+Mental Health

Program Details

Young Women Empowered cultivates the power of diverse young women (those who identify as women or girls or were assigned female at birth) to be creative leaders and courageous changemakers through transformative programs within a collaborative community of belonging.

Nature Connections is a cohort program where ~20 youth meet every other weekend to go on an outdoor adventure. A few select activities include snowshoeing, hiking, tide-pooling, and camping, all culminating in a summer backpacking trip. The ultimate goal of this experience is to build genuine and fulfilling relationships with other people and the land, as well as gain skills and confidence in the outdoors. Participants are joined by a crew of adult mentors who share these experiences with the youth and provide guidance.

Youth report feeling a deeper connection with the world, a sense of calm and belonging in natural spaces, and lasting friendship-building. Inspired by these results, Y-WE continues to build the base of this program to bring in more youth and develop an internship program that gives returners more opportunities for leadership and continued technical skills.

Additional Services
Y-WE's programming also includes: Grow (gardening), Create (arts), Write, STEAM, Affinity programs, and summer camps! We also provide wraparound wellness and mental health services to all our youth and community.

Contact Lara Ruegg, Nature Connections Program Coordinator lara@y-we.org (206) 399-0013 Young Women Empowered

Populations Served
Y-WE serves girls, trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive youth in the Greater Seattle area. We center around BIPOC identity and integrate intergenerational learning through our mentorship model.

Staff Composition
Y-WE is a women- and femme-led organization, and an almost entirely BIPOC organization. With support from the Programs and Operations staff, Nature Connections is led by a single Program Coordinator and a team of volunteer mentors—all of whom are intentionally selected to reflect the identities of the youth we serve and provide the safety and outdoor expertise of the activities we do.

Cost to Participate
All Y-WE programs are at no cost to participants. All equipment is provided, with healthy and culturally relevant food available at all programs.

Y-WE in the Media

Y-WE partnered with Golden Bricks Events to host the first Public Lands UnEarthed field school, where alumni of the Nature Connections program learned to conduct professional interviews about BIPOC identity on public lands. Read and Listen

Two participants sit together in a tent and enjoy the outdoors. Their camp is set up in a grassy clearing with thick woods behind them.

Participants maintain their balance as they walk in a line along a fallen tree trunk. Around them are dense woods and foliage

A participant poses with her arms stretched out, with snowy terrain as the background. Far behind her are other participants having fun in the snow.

Four participants enjoy the sunlight that streams through the verdant trees around them. One participant stands while the other three relax in foldable chairs.

On a cloudy day, two participants give a thumbs-up and wide smiles from where they sit in a kayak together.

Two participants bask in the cool air as they lay sprawled on the flat face of a boulder, both wearing satisfied grins.

Recent Case Studies

A sidewalk, path, and landscaped garden beds with flat-roofed, wood-sided buildings on either side.

Place

Power To Be Basecamp

This outdoor activity center serves as a base of operations for Power To Be, a nonprofit organization that creates access to nature for youth, families, and adults living with cognitive, physical, financial, and social barriers.

A group of youth play with a football while other children sit on the berm. Behind them, kids play on the climber dome. The school building in the background is painted with bright colors and artwork.

Place

Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy (formerly Chester Arthur Schoolyard)

Formerly an asphalt-covered space that offered little to engage youth, the renovated schoolyard at the Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy is now an inviting green space for students and community members that elevates hands-on learning, physical activity, and connection to the natural world.

Surrounded by an abundance of green, a participant reaches up to carefully inspect a particular branch of leaves during one of Tremont’s herpetology SANCP classes.

Program

Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont

Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont is a nonprofit field school situated within Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It offers immersive, nature-based programs that enhance health and spark curiosity across all ages through profound engagement with the natural world.