Social Action
Georgetown Outdoor Education serves its university community with guiding, equipment, and transportation services that access some of the most scenic areas in and around D.C. Our organization provides students and faculty with an opportunity to escape from the often-hectic pace of capital and campus life in order to gain new perspective on their endeavors. Because Outdoor Education has been so blessed with success and popularity on campus, one of our sophomore guides, Carlie John, decided to extend the privileges of the well-funded program to others in the D.C. community. In the spring of 2001, Ms. John initiated a youth outreach program called "GROWL"-short for Georgetown Reaching Out through Wilderness Learning. After two years, GROWL has built fruitful relationships with three elementary and middle schools in lower to middle class neighborhoods of inner-city D.C. The program has also established a relationship with George Washington University's new outdoor club. Currently, four of our GROWL leaders are students from GWU.
GROWL is a once-a-week after school program that provides children with a safe and educational atmosphere while their parents finish work. It is also an enriching alternative to their ordinary after-school athletics at a local YMCA. Because most of these children are born and/or raised in an urban, "concrete and steel" environment, GROWL works to foster more appreciation for nature both in and outside of the city. We train students in elementary orienteering, knot-tying, survival, and ecology in preparation for a culminating day-hike in the nearby Shenandoah Mountains.
After a semester, we hope to instill in our students a greater sense of their place in a world that is larger, more beautiful, and more diverse than the world they find in their everyday surroundings. We do our best to introduce them to a natural world that is worthy of respect and protection, just as other people are worthy of respect and compassion. We hope these children will be even more inspired by nature as they mature, and eventually, we hope they will develop the ethical notions that necessarily ride tandem with a sense humility before the earth.