The New Mexico Outdoor Recreation Division of the New Mexico Economic Development Department has announced funding of almost $1 Million dollars in New Outdoor Equity Fund awards to 33 organizations across the state.
This will support organizations in 16 rural areas, 13 urban locations, one land grant, and 5 Tribal communities.
28 of these organizations are first time recipients of Outdoor Equity Fund awards.
The Outdoor Equity Fund is a first-of-its-kind institution and was created in 2019 to allow all New Mexican youth equitable access to the outdoors.
The grant provides funds for youth programming that foster respect for New Mexico’s land, water and cultural heritage and teaches the importance of being a steward on the earth.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the outdoor equity fund into law, and since then the fund has been able to award over $5.7 Million dollars to almost 250 organization state wide.
This fund has been able to support activities for at least 72,000 young New Mexicans to get outdoors and participate in hiking, mountain biking, canoeing, and Horsemanship.
The youth have also been introduced to lessons in wilderness safety and water conservation through these programs.
For the third round of the FY24 Outdoor equity fund grant cycle, $975,000 dollars were distributed with an average of 30,000 dollars per award.
The recipients were able to supplement by matching almost 700,000 dollars and this served close to 9000 New Mexican children
The combined amount thus far for FY24 is over 3.7 million awarded to outdoors programs, this is almost 5 times as much as the amount of the previous year. This was matched by 115 organizations generating 2.8 million dollars and were able to reach over 36,000 youth.
