Our Mission of Gender Equality — AWE Summit Scholarship Foundation

Welcome to the Summit Scholarship Foundation – currently a 501(c)(3). We have worked diligently since obtaining nonprofit status and are excited to share our gender equality mission and vision with you. This direction was born out of many hours of intensive work, learning, and thinking about how to best serve our community. To everyone reading this, we ask for your continued support.

Mission of Summit Scholarship Foundation:

The Summit Scholarship Foundation 501(c)(3) exists to break down barriers for women from all walks of life to enter the big mountain realm.

We empower women through adventure and contribute to gender equality on and off the mountain.

Our organization is keenly aware of the inequalities that act as barriers to entry into the big mountain realm. Cost, experience, technical knowledge, representation, time off, cultural barriers, discrimination, equipment limitations, networks, confidence…the list goes on. The people we support often face many or all of these challenges within already intersectionally marginalized communities and identities.

The approach we have taken to reshaping our mission is to use an equity (vs. equality) lens to better understand what these terms mean to the communities we serve. was focused. As defined by UNESDOC (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), “Gender equality means the fair treatment of all genders according to their needs. ” We recognize the unique needs of marginalized communities in these spaces and directly address those needs. We must address inequalities in large mountain regions by providing the resources needed to

During our work, we talked at length about the importance of gender equality, but also recognized the challenges of successfully carrying out that mission. It is one thing to say that gender equality is a goal; it is quite another to achieve it through fair action for all marginalized genders. As an organization, we want to recognize and acknowledge the limitations, both in knowledge and practice, in fulfilling this mission. More on this later, but one thing was clear to everyone. Gender equality must be the goal of any challenge. Our focus is to be a catalyst for change in our vast mountain region and contribute to communities that are fair and safe for all genders.

When discussing our limitations, we acknowledge that our team (at the time of writing) is comprised of five cis women and one transgender, non-binary person. Three out of six people identify as BIPOC, but there is no representation from Black, Indigenous, or Asian communities. We understand that this is a limitation that we currently face, and to be aware of this gap and how it can limit our efforts within our mission. I promise. In discussions focused on gender equality, we consulted with the larger community (other non-binary and binary trans people) to add further insight and education to the decision-making process. We intend to continue these best practices and look forward to welcoming a cross-section of our community as our team grows.

Another limitation we would like to address is the current capacity for gender participation. As of this writing, the partner organizations we currently work with our scholarship recipients are women-only (trans-inclusive) organizations. Other marginalized genders, such as trans men, non-binary people, and Two-Spirit people, are at a significant disadvantage in achieving their big mountain goals. As our foundation grows, we hope to expand our scholarship recipient base to include all marginalized genders in full support of our mission of gender equality. . The Summit Scholarship Foundation recognizes and acknowledges that by supporting women-only travel, we support a variety of marginalized genders, and therefore support the goal of equality rather than equity.

In discussions about our mission, we evaluated the possibility of opening the applicant pool to all marginalized genders in 2023. However, our main concern is to provide a safe and welcoming environment for all scholarship recipients, and to allow adequate time to vet partner organizations and guides. , we can arrange for the recipient to travel that meets our fair and safe requirements. Even within women-only communities, we recognize the gaps created by intersectionality. For example, a white cis woman may have a radically different experience in the mountains than a black trans woman, despite being the same woman. For us, it's important to take this into account when building our programs. As we work to find new partner organizations to support marginalized gender families, we aim to achieve our gender equality mission through interim action. We partner with vetted organizations that align with our mission, welcome them with access to online resources and networking groups, give them a voice on our platform, and engage in many other similar actions. By taking action, we support other genders.

The Summit Scholarship Foundation team is excited about this new challenge and working with an organization that creates real change in outdoor spaces. We all feel strongly that these spaces are some of the most empowering, uplifting, inspiring, and healing spaces around. And everyone should have access to them and feel welcome. We would not be able to achieve our mission without your support, so once again we would like to thank you for your support.

We are looking forward to another great year in 2023.

(For more information on how to support the Summit Scholarship Foundation next season and beyond, please visit click here. )