The Boulder, Colo.-based Leave No Trace Center is partnering with North Carolina-based Black Folks Camp Too on a project with the goal of creating a more inclusive outdoor community. The Unity Blaze Patch Project is an initiative to gather the outdoor community around the campfire, and digitally around the #unityblaze, to spark up the conversations and connections needed to build a more inclusive outdoor space for all to enjoy and protect.
The Unity Blaze is the Black Folks Camp Too-created symbol of unity in the outdoors, and those who display it follow the blaze phrase: “Treat Everyone, Everywhere, Equally.” Any business or individual displaying it is stoking the movement “to create a more inclusive outdoor space by signaling to the world that you treat everyone, everywhere, equally,” according to BFCT founder and president, Earl B. Hunter Jr.
“Leave No Trace and Black Folks Camp Too are asking our community to join us in committing to a level of allyship in the outdoors,” according to Dana Watts, Leave No Trace executive director. “By wearing the Unity Blaze patch, we can bring people together and ultimately create opportunities for more people to get outside safely.”
Donations from the Unity Blaze patches will support Leave No Trace and Black Folks Camp Too’s shared work to provide outdoor industry training and educational opportunities to alumni from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, as well as other collegiate alumni, through the CampUS Scholarship Program. Funds from the project will also ignite the Unity Blaze Fund, which will distribute empowering endowments to groups and organizations that are working to build a more inclusive outdoors. To learn more about the Unity Blaze Patch Project and the initiatives it will support visit www.LNT.org/UnityBlaze.
“Our company was created to find solutions,” Hunter said. “We believe our partnership with Leave No Trace will educate ‘more’ Black folks about the outdoor lifestyle, improve diversity workforce talent within the outdoor industry and encourage Unity as we preserve and protect our public lands.”