Encouraging Black Adventure

Adventuring feels like joy and confidence in an experience. It reminds you that you are capable. Adventuring through nature expands your self esteem and roots you to who you are without the nose of who yours supposed to be. Nature heals. I want to facilitate joyful exposure to our Black community to adventure and the outdoors in all of its many forms. I encourage Black adventure. In 2016 I prayed for the answer to how I can help my community. In 2018 I found myself annoyed and done with the response to something outside of our comfort zone as “white people shit“ and “we don’t do that“. I created The Unpopular Black from those regular responses. It's not that we don’t do adventurous things, acknowledging the historically fearful and valid reasons, adventure activities are simply more often marketed towards a white facing audience leaving us under represented, uncomfortable being a token Black person or not knowing how or where to begin or what to do. The Unpopular Black's mission is to encourage adventure beyond stereotypes and excuses of what Black people “don’t do”.

With your donation I will be able to hire help to continue to build the adventure directory that I've been working on. The vision is for a national directory for Black Americans to find adventurous activities, Black adventuring organizations, and inspirational Black adventurers because although we are trying something outside of our comfort zone there will still be a level of familiarity in sharing the experience.

I will also be doing a 6 month series of road tripping through different states, regions, and terrains in the US for a few reasons. 1. In the last few years, Black international travel has increased exponentially as we are seeking beautiful sceneries and unknown territories but there are countless unimaginably phenomenal spaces in nature here domestically that so many people, especially Black Americans, are unaware of. Most of them are within a few hours of any major city, most likely including yours. 2. I want to showcase Black owned adventure businesses throughout the US because yes, there is such a thing and they often just want to see more of us participating. 3. As social distancing is incredibly important with COVID-19 spiking again, I want to encourage adventuring through road trips where you can get to new and magical places within the safety of your car with little contact with others.

The series will be 14 days of each month starting in September 2020. I will be documenting and showing the series through The Unpopular Black YouTube channel. I need help paying for the cost of the trip as well as the editing of the footage along with hiring a paid videographer intern for the in-depth adventuring.

I'm here to share my passion and show up for my community with my purpose.

To recap, the $60k is to:
-hire help to build the solid foundation for The Unpopular Black Adventure Directory website.
-Pay for 6 months of a road trip series to show Black representation in adventure through the US with the cost to include equipment, adventure vehicle rentals, editing and a videographer.

Yes, I absolutely LOVE to Adventure and even more I love to encourage others to do the same. It is also A LOT of work that often leaves me burnt out. Everything I make goes into The Unpopular Black but in order to grow I need your help.

What if when presented with an unfamiliar circumstance, instead of dismissing it as, "Na that's not for me", you're reminded of when you did some wildly adventurous Unpopular Black thing and how electric you felt afterwards. Let's do this. We're here for a good time AND a long time.

I am so grateful for your time, attention and love. I so greatly appreciate your donation and please share this with all of your people.