Key Ideas & Recommendations from Portland Recreation Forum

The following are some of the key ideas and recommendations delivered at the Recreation Forum in Troutdale, Oregon, on March 15, 2007. Please feel free to add comments on these suggestions and how they can best be implemented.

When asked which outdoor activities they’d most like to see in a dream program, Oregon kids answered tent camping, sledding and tubing, swimming and diving, field sports, ATV riding, and paintballing. If you can mix some of these activities into your programming, you have a better chance that kids will want to be involved. Further information on the statewide study of parents and youth is available on Oregon’s SCORP website (www.oregon.gov/OPRD/PLANS/SCORP.shtml).
Terry Bergerson, Oregon State Parks & Recreation

In order to increase diversity, it’s important to figure out how the current diverse crowds that are already out recreating got there. We need to get out there and ask them. Use on-site user surveys, focus groups. Preliminary studies found that it’s not about ethnicity so much as it is about socioeconomic barriers. When asked what keeps them inside, kids replied weather, gang activity, fear of things they’ve seen on the news, and because their parents are afraid they’ll get hurt. The barrier of parents should be turned into a positive. Kids whose parents take them outdoors are the ones who are still recreating outdoors later on in life.
Dr. Robert Burns, West Virginia University

Connect people to the public land, their neighborhoods, and each other. We need to be realistic about who we’re hitting with our message. This is why we need to focus on the youth. Older people are already set in their ways. We cannot leave out the Latinos, the fastest growing minority in the country, and the blacks and expect to succeed. We need a diversity plan.
Charles Jordan, Chairman of the Board, The Conservation Fund

Visit www.tools4outdoors.org to find more information on more than 60 programs providing assistance for recreation.

We hope all recreation community supporters will support growth of the Recreational Trails Program, which is funded by the 18.3 cents per gallon federal tax paid on fuel used in non-highway recreational activities. We only get $90 million annually under current law. We hope to increase that substantially beginning in 2009.
Derrick Crandall, President, American Recreation Coalition

The formation of Outdoor Alliance has combined membership-driven nonprofits organized around outdoor sports. Support your membership organizations so there’s a united voice on the Hill for our initiatives.
Sam Drevo, Professional Kayaker, Ambassador for American Whitewater

Support efforts to unify information collected like SCORP data with things that public health organizations collect like the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. They are willing to add our relevant questions to their surveys.
Clifton Watts, Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University

Come to our schools and tell us about your programs! We don’t know what you have to offer! Use our school’s careers center to show us what you have. That’s where we go to get our information on clubs and activities to do outside of school. Our school is big on technology. Show us how we can help with the future of the outdoors by introducing us to jobs and show us how our technological skills can help you. Also, a lot of our recreational and life skills programs are being cut from our school. We need your support to keep our programs. We’d also like to start our own forum to keep kids more involved, and we would love your help.
Students from Polytechnic High School

Think beyond the small programs that reach 20 kids, think about how we can reach 20,000! We don’t want to just hit little pockets of kids; we shouldn’t leave anyone out.
Jerry Rhodes, U.S. Orienteering Federation

The key message of the forums has been the need to look outside ourselves to see how we can contribute to the larger benefit of recreation to society. A few states have regular gatherings for those who work in recreation (government agencies, nonprofits, private industry, etc.) to coordinate efforts. This could be implemented elsewhere. Keep up the communication with each other after we are gone.

We should make part of www.recreation.gov "Your Space" and have it based on user-developed content. Let kids post their photos and messages on the site. We need to bring the Secretary of Education and the school system into the conversation. We can work within the current framework for kids’ time commitments. On the "More Kids in the Woods" Grant Program, there’s no way the federal agencies can develop huge outreach and develop programs to connect urban youth to the outdoors on their own. There are many of these efforts already underway, we just needed a vehicle to hook us all up.
Jim Bedwell, Director of Recreation, US Forest Service

If we’re really interested in engaging youth, we’ve got to ask them how: ask them how to do it and what they want to do. We then need to be prepared to respond to their answers.
Tim Wood, Director, Oregon Parks and Recreation

Tourism is a $7.9 billion dollar industry and provides 90,000 jobs for Oregonians. 70% of the business in the industry are sole proprietorships. This is an important indicator for why people are coming here: uncrowded, unspoiled natural beauty. If the generation coming up is not interested in what I am selling, I have a product to market that no one wants to buy. It’s not just about economic impact, but also about the implications for future stewardship. This is truly the critical piece. There are those who desire to use the lands but don’t have the equipment. Who better to take them out than experienced stewards such as outdoor outfitters?
Todd Davidson, CEO, Travel Oregon