Hello dear Mappy Hour community,
As the year comes to a close, I wanted to share a few of the accomplishments of this community over the past 12 months. While the form of Mappy Hour has shifted dramatically this year, we’ve still been able to learn and explore together thanks to our amazing chapter leaders, the incredible speakers who offered your time, and all of our members who showed up and shared your own unique thoughts and experiences (and your ideas as we planned)!
Some stats:
- Y’all, we raised over $10,000 together over the year for a variety of awesome non-profits including GirlTrek, Athlete Ally and the Split Rock River Bridge Fund. (Shoutout to Google and The North Face for matching our individual donations to help us get to that final number.)
- Over 5,000 folks joined a Mappy Hour event this year
- Through 2 phone banking events, we connected with 310 unique voters providing voter registration support
- Mappy Hour X (our virtual chapter) grew by 1572%
2020 Begins… in person!
Early in 2020, things were pumping with events popping up around the country! The DC team hosted two Mappy Hour’s diving into local adventures and a talk on adaptive sports with the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes. In Bentonville, Heather spearheaded a talk about owls with Ozark Natural Science Center. Lindsay in Seattle hosted events diving into snowshoeing and backcountry skiing near the city. Liz in Denver hosted a full moon hike, an avalanche safety session and an incredible panel for International Women’s Day. In Chicago, Erica hosted a night about traveling to Patagonia (someday…) and another incredible panel of women (video). And finally, at my home chapter (go NYC!), we talked ice climbing, women in sports and hiking the Appalachian Trail (video).
2020 Continues… online!
Obviously, since March we’ve shifted all of our events online. This means many of our talks are archived on the Mappy Hour hub now for all to watch! Note: Mappy Hour content do not have a paywall so it is free to access. However, if you watch a video and enjoy the conversation, we would appreciate a donation (there’s a button on each event!) This helps us continue to produce events and pay for boring things like hosting the website and making sure trolls don’t attack.
And now… into the 2020 archives we go! I tried to organize the videos by theme so you can decide where to start your Mappy Hour video binge appropriately.
Deep Dives
- Building inclusive communities with Kareemah Batts.
- Travel and mental health with author Jeremy Hance
- Building and Maintaining the East Coast Greenway
- Circular design and the future of sustainable apparel with The North Face Renewed
- Living the surf life in NYC and writing a book with Diane Cardwell
Professional Athletes:
- Coree Woltering
- Conrad Anker & Sam Elias
- Kevin Jorgeson (actually there is no video and this is why we stopped using Zoom in April)
Trail Running
- trail running in cities
- finding a running community
- trail running specific bootcamp
- learning how to avoid injury!
Bikepacking
- bikepacking 101
- bike touring gear
- what it’s like to bike along the coast of Maine
- how to plan a trip to Long Island and Cuba
- and starting to bike as an adult and then biking all over the world!
Cooking
- backcountry ramen
- a variety of recipes (from chilli to mango fried rice) with MONTyBOCA
Backyard Adventures:
- Backyard Adventures with a NYC Park Ranger
- Backyard Adventures with Chicago Forest Preserve
In conclusion
Seriously, thank you to everyone who shared your expertise, everyone who helped connect us to amazing speakers, everyone who attended an event, shared an event with a friend or co-worker, donated to a fundraiser and stuck with us through a wild year. Finally, huge thanks to our global sponsors without whom none of this would have been possible: The North Face and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co!
Next week, I’ll be sharing some exciting new programs coming to Mappy land so stay tuned!
Onto the next,
Sarah
