Outdoor Youth Connection (OYC) empowers young people with the experience, skills & opportunities to access the outdoors while developing life skills that can impact their lives, peers & community.

OYC is a collaborative effort between the California State Parks, California State Parks Foundation and the Pacific Leadership Institute. This collaborative accelerates resources to get youth outdoors and encourage them to be active and develop their lifelong leadership skills. OYC targets youth who are involved in community-based organizations from across Northern California.

OYC offers full circle leadership training. We do this by first by connecting with community based organizations from across California and inviting their youth to our OYC trainings sessions located in different state parks.

At the trainings we also build in the value of outdoor recreation opportunities to teach leadership skills. Our OYC trainings expose youth to nature and engage them with other youth from different communities.  In a fun way, we empower them with lessons they will need to learn and apply.

After the training, these graduates return to their community organization and work together to plan events; some of the events need to be outdoor recreation trip for their peers and some need to be a form of community service.  The youth and organizations plan and lead the events.  OYC establishes a scholarship for this organization and the youth can apply to OYC to help fund the events.

In two years OYC trained 275 youth from 43 different agencies who have lead 102 trips for 4800 people in their outdoor and community events.