by Lauren Bains & Naomi Ochwat
“I learned more how to be open and inspired, creative and logical, and to pay more attention to aspects like my growth zone, and whose native lands I live on,” said a 16 year old, even though she spent summer 2020 at her home. We - Inspiring Girls Expeditions - have been leading girls on learning adventures in high mountains and remote coasts for 20 years. This year, we turned our energy to leading them on learning adventures right in their own homes….
When the COVID-19 pandemic intensified in February, we had just finished selecting our top applicants for the 2020 Inspiring Girls Expeditions. Since safety is always our #1 priority at Inspiring Girls Expeditions, we made the decision to cancel our in-person expeditions, but we knew that our mission to empower female-identifying youth to explore and lead was still important, perhaps more than ever before. We decided to push our own comfort zone as an organization and take our expeditions to somewhere they had never been - into our own living rooms and backyards.
We set off on our expeditions in the beginning of July with six full-time instructors, 36 participants, 9 guest speakers, and numerous staff and volunteers running the background logistics. Using collaborative online learning spaces, video meetings, and a newly created field journal, we set out to explore art, science, and the connections and intersections between these two lenses for observing the world around us. We began with writing team contracts to help us work together in a supportive and respectful way. Then we looked more closely at our local landscapes, our goals, strengths and weaknesses, and whose ancestral lands we work, live, and play on. We got curious about the natural processes that support and surround us and the plants, animals, and insects that share these spaces with us - even in our backyards. “There is a lot of variety of plant species in my own backyard that I never really noticed until I started this program,” one of our participants pointed out. We discussed the interconnectedness of art and science and the importance of observation. One participant emphasized this: “I learned that art can be used to represent the physicality of science, that art and science are both ways of viewing the world, and they are not mutually exclusive, and that art and science can both be found EVERYWHERE.”
And most significantly and perhaps most surprisingly, the connections and friendships that arise from our physical expeditions grew just as strong, despite the distance and computer screens separating us all. It was no easier to say goodbye to our teams at the end of the 6 weeks of Zoom meetings than at the end of 12 days in the field. As one participant said, through the Expeditions@Home, she discovered that “there are other people out there that do like the things I do and that I am not alone in my love for learning and passion for the environment [as] living in such a small town sometimes makes me feel.” Our purpose of inspiring and empowering female-identifying youth is no longer limited to our planned glacier- fjord- and mountain-based expeditions; we can also create change together in our living rooms and backyards.
