Trail Mixed Collective
A Collective of Women of Color Outdoors
Trail Mixed Collective is a collective - a movement and a community - for empowering women of color in outdoor sports. We exist to increase access through approachable education and gear, safe community spaces, and motivation and guidance through a formal mentorship program. Oh, and we have a fun online mag full of inspiring stories, interviews, and more.
Our core purpose is increasing access to outdoor sports for women of color. We believe that approaching new outdoor sports and later, advancing at them, relies on a few things: inspiration from people we can relate to, access to education and gear, safe community spaces, and motivation and guidance from mentors who care. The outdoors is for everyone, and our goal is to help create safe spaces to learn, grow, bond, and excel for women of color - it starts here.
Join us as we work together to increase connections, community and opportunities for women of color in outdoor adventure sports.
Hi! Our name's are Liselle Pires and Quena Batres and we're excited you're here!
We live in Seattle, but spend as much time as we can exploring the mountains, towns, and coastlines everywhere beyond our city limits. We met doing a backpacking loop around Loowit (Mt St Helens), and immediately connected over our love for outdoor sports, as well as the melanin in our skin that has a funny tendency to make our experiences in the outdoors a little different.
We're Indian and Guatemalan-American first generation women, respectively. In our collective experience, picking up adventure sports without a mentor is tough as hell, being in groups or teams where we're the only woman of color is common and often isolating, and there are centuries of racist, financial, educational, social and cultural barriers that continue to make it challenging for women of color to get outside and adventure.
We believe we can play a role in changing that and sharing the places that have changed our lives. Becoming novices and becoming experts, learning in safe spaces where we can all nod our heads, accessing gear that has always felt like 'a little too much', building deep mentorship relationships, and showing up to show one another what we can do, and the joy we can all share. That's the goal.
organization
501(c)3
501(c)3
