Who We Are & What We Stand For
Mission
Adventure Scientists® is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that equips partners with data collected from the outdoors that are crucial to addressing environmental and human health challenges.
Goals
1. Be the most efficient provider of hard-to-obtain environmental data that would otherwise be unavailable for conservation.
2. Grow a network of informed volunteers who have a deep commitment to conservation after participating in the scientific process.
3. Serve as an invaluable connection between the conservation and outdoor communities.
Our Vision
By amplifying and accelerating our partners’ impact, we envision a world in which the ability to unlock solutions to environmental and human health challenges is only limited by the ability to ask the right questions.
Data collection can be expensive, time consuming, and physically demanding, which limits the questions scientists can ask. Adventure Scientists tackles this problem by providing our partners with reliable data at an otherwise unobtainable scale. By recruiting, training and managing individuals with strong outdoor skills—such as mountaineering, diving or whitewater kayaking—we bring back hard-to-obtain data from the far corners of the globe.
Through their involvement with these projects, volunteers become informed ambassadors for the species and places with which they work. By telling their stories in the rich tradition of outdoor adventure, we greatly magnify our partners’ marketing efforts.
The Adventure Scientists’ combination of constituency, visibility and data serves as an invaluable conservation and scientific accelerator around the world.
Our Organizational Values
Creativity
Taking the same path only gets you where you’ve already been. We believe in creating solutions where they don’t currently exist, and in challenging ourselves to think beyond traditional ideas, to push boundaries, to innovate and to create new approaches to traditional problems.
Optimism
Roadblocks occur regularly in life and in work. By maintaining a positive outlook, we navigate challenges while relying on the support of our team to avoid becoming discouraged.
Persistence
The greatest achievements must be earned. We give each task our all and follow through until it is complete.
Achievement
Ideas are only as good as the results they achieve. We identify where we can have the greatest effect, thereby choosing which battles to fight and how to best do so.
Reflection
Peer evaluation and self-reflection are essential components of success. In day-to-day operations, we acknowledge that each team member comes with his or her best intentions, and collectively seeks every opportunity for improvement.
Stewardship
You only get out what you put in. We foster individuals as we do the environment, investing in the people we want to invest in Adventure Scientists. We encourage our team to pursue a healthy work-life balance, believe in each other as individuals, and help equip and support each other to achieve personal and professional goals.
Our Commitment to Equity, Inclusion, and Justice
Adventure Scientists works at the intersection of two spheres that are deeply rooted in oppression–scientific research and outdoor adventure. We are working to restructure our systems so everyone will feel included, valued, and safe engaging with Adventure Scientists regardless of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, age, past or current military service, marital status, parental status, religion, level of formal education, socio-economic status, immigration status, or other identity. Adventure Scientists acknowledges the global system of white privilege under which our organization was founded and has perpetuated. We are part of this system, and it is our responsibility to help dismantle it.
In our commitment to an Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (EIJ) framework, we recognize that the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation disproportionately harm the most vulnerable, including women, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, hardworking communities with low- to moderate-income individuals, and those with less access to power. Adventure Scientists’ purpose derives from our investment in protecting global ecosystems for the good of all people.
Seek to understand:
Many people, often BIPOC, have experienced disenchantment with the outdoors because policies have disadvantaged them. The first step to breaking down these barriers is to engage in conversation and seek to understand those groups targeted with discrimination. We will openly listen and take accountability for prejudice and barriers that have existed for far too long. We must recognize the layers of systemic inequity inherent in our work and then disrupt the cycle in which they persist. We are actively seeking to collaborate, innovate, and put equitable systems in place at our organization.
We have begun by:
-
- Ensuring that our job and volunteer opportunities reach groups targeted with discrimination by consciously reaching out to outdoor adventure affinity groups (e.g. BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+ led outdoor groups and job boards).
- Seeking to elevate diverse scientists and outdoor adventurers in our media and communication efforts.
- Prioritizing all-staff and board training centered on equity, inclusion, and justice, including engaging with the The Avarna Group to assess, examine, and restructure our organization’s systems and align staff and board in this work.t
- Forming a committee dedicated to identifying needed actions and making recommendations to the leadership team in order to operationalize diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in the structure and strategy of Adventure Scientists.
- Committing to and upholding the Outdoor CEO Diversity Pledge.
- Building working relationships with scientific researchers and consortia who represent and advocate for groups targeted with discrimination within the scientific field.
How we’re measuring our progress:
-
- Surveying our staff, board, and volunteers to continually identify areas of improvement, and formulating action plans to address them through our EIJ committee.
- Assessing the current demographic makeup of our staff, board, and volunteers, setting goals, and tracking these demographics as we continue our EIJ work.
- Summarizing our work, progress, and shortcomings openly and transparently through an annual equity and justice report that will be published in our newsletters, social media, and featured on our website.
A call to action:
We welcome you to act beside us. It is time to be alarmed, to amplify and support the voices and work of diverse communities around the globe. If we do not take action now, we may forever lose the ecosystems, natural processes, livelihoods, and people that make our world thrive. This is our invitation to you, to hold us accountable to our word, so that we may act with integrity in bringing equity, inclusion, and justice into our work. We will value any feedback we receive to make sure our work and messages support and affirm everyone in our community. Our goal is to address challenges to human health and the environment. We recognize that we can’t succeed in this mission without your solidarity. Find us at inclusion@adventurescientists.org.
You can share feedback with us by writing here. This statement is fluid and will be updated often along with the resources, so please check back. This statement was most recently updated August 19, 2021.