Muddy Conversations

Going down the Mississippi River I have been able to talk to major organizations about their outreach and their own organizations. I haven’t really talked about the different organizations I’ve talked to on this blog yet because each time I talk to them no one seems to be reaching out to any type of diverse community. The biggest similarities into outreach I see is that people are reaching out to the elderly communities and the youth. There is also an outreach for the upper 20s and to mid-30s for employment but not too much on the actual engagement of them or teens. I think that this could be such a missed demographic that could really benefit from the outdoors. I also obviously noticed that no organization is making too much of an effort to engage other diverse communities into the outdoors.
    During my conversations with different organizations, I always make it a point to bring up the lack of diversity in the outdoors. This is just a way to set out my agenda about getting more of an effort on diversity outreach in the outdoors. I always want to leave people thinking of their actions in their organizations and hopefully have them do more diversity outreach. I have made a few suggestions for different organizations. In the National Mississippi Museum, I had suggested doing Spanish tours on specific days or having like a Spanish night to encourage the Latino community to come out and learn about the Mississippi River and maybe inspire some to get out on the water to explore.
    It wasn’t until I got to St. Louis when I met “Big Muddy Mike” and he was actually actively trying to engage diverse communities in his area. Mike runs an outdoors organization where he takes people out on the lower Mississippi River in tandem canoes. He does some cash catching tours of moonlight canoes with a chef and doing an over the fire meal for wealthier people in the are. He puts all that money back into the company to keep costs low for his more lower-income customers or even free. He does a lot of outreach for youth in his area which is a majority black community. Mike wants people in the south to have a better connection with the river and for there to be less of a stigma around the river. His goal is to have every child in the surrounding area to have jumped in the river before he dies.

Muddy Adventures: https://www.2muddy.com/