Great Outdoors America Week in Washington, DC

Last week, nearly one hundred volunteers joined Sierra Club's Mission Outdoors and Resilient Habitats campaigns, including sixty youth from Baltimore County, in our nation’s Capitol for Great Outdoors America Week. Volunteer activists met with the administration and their elected leaders to talk about protecting our public lands and providing more opportunities for Americans to connect with the great outdoors.

Volunteers called on congress to support a clean public lands package and to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

During the week, Mission Outdoors and the Outdoors Alliance for Kids hosted a congressional briefing on military kids, families, veterans and the outdoors. The Honorable Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) participated in the panel moderated by Mission Outdoors' Stacy Bare. Participants shared the unique challenges military families and veterans face and discussed innovative programs to encourage our nation's heroes to explore and enjoy our public lands.

Mission Outdoors also hosted sixty youth organized by Baltimore Inner City Outings Chair Nicole Veltre and another dozen youth from Outdoors Nation to present a Great Outdoors America Champion awards to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and Representative John Sarbanes for their leadership connecting America with the outdoors (see the photo with Administrator Jackson and Rep. Sarbanes above). Rep. Sarbanes even tweeted about his meeting later on, and included a photo.

All in all, it was a very successful and very fun week.

-- Kristina Ortez, Sierra Club Mission Outdoors