When asked about her earliest memories outside, Marissa Llanes smiled as she recalled the calming sensation of watering plants outside her childhood home in the San Gabriel Valley.
“It’s not exactly a parks-related memory, because it wasn’t until my 20s when I first ventured out into the San Gabriel Mountains,” admits Marissa. “But growing up, tending to plants was one of my favorite things to do with my mom. I felt whole.”
Marissa’s story is a reminder that we all have a connection to nature, but not all of us enjoy equal access to public lands— even those in our own backyard. Through her role as the recently appointed executive director of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Community Nature Connection (CNC), Marissa hopes to see systemic barriers addressed head on, to increase access for communities impacted by racial, socio-economic, and disability injustices.
One focus of CNC’s mission is to provide job training and workforce development for youth of color, to ensure communities of color see themselves represented in park staff and other outdoor careers.
“I grew up connecting to nature by watering plants outside, but that didn’t necessarily translate to feeling ready to apply to a competitive position within a parks system,” says Marissa. CNC’s several training programs and shadowing opportunities offer a clear pathway for youth of color to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to pursue a career in the outdoors.
Through CNC’s Naturalist Explorers program for example, local high school students engage in 16-20 weeks of learning outdoor skills, public speaking, environmental justice and local ecology, CPR/First Aid, resume and interview skills, interpretive and educational techniques, and more.
“We’ve had many Naturalist Explorer students who started shadowing our Lead Naturalists in an Outdoor Leader position and eventually became Naturalists and Lead Naturalists themselves. Vianey Moreno followed that trajectory and is now on our team leading programs in her community among others.”
“These programs play a pivotal role in our long-term vision for expanding equitable access to parks and advancing conservation,” continues Marissa. “The reality is, communities of color are impacted most by climate change. By investing in future generations of outdoor and environmental advocates, especially leaders of color, we’re strengthening leadership in the conservation movement and investing in our collective future.”
And then at the bottom of that section, To learn more about the work Community Nature Connection is doing to advance equitable access in the outdoors, visit https://www.communitynatureconnection.org/