The Feminist Bird Club Breaks Barriers
In 2016, Molly Adams founded the Feminist Bird Club in NYC after finding the birding community full of “sexist or queer-hostile attitudes.” Now with 27 chapters across four countries, the Feminist Bird Club is an organization that makes the hobby more accessible and welcoming for queer individuals, people of color and people with disabilities. While fighting for improved access to traditionally white outdoor spaces, the social justice-leaning club has also raised more than $100,000 for the National Network of Abortion Funds, Transgender and Intersex Justice Project and other vital non-profits. Club members Martha Harbison and Meera Jagroop credit fellow organizations like Outdoor Afro and Latino Outdoors, as well as the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, for helping create pathways to build a movement. They write for Teen Vogue, “This work isn’t flashy. It’s investing in infrastructure, changing an economic model to accommodate more free passes and programming, compensating community experts for their labor, and training staff on how to create inclusion and belonging. It’s the ongoing, never-ending effort to build and maintain relationships and trust, especially with people who have been burned by half-hearted diversity pushes before.” Learn more at Teen Vogue.
Image courtesy of Mikey Burns/Outside Clothes
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