The staff and directors of IMBA Canada see one of our key roles as facilitating the sharing of knowledge for mountain bike advocacy within Canada. As such, we often focus our efforts on seeking out best practices and encouraging clubs and associations across the country to integrate these into their organizational mandates and core programming.
We believe the heart of recreation advocacy is in building community. We know that everyone must feel like they belong and have an equal opportunity to join. Within the context of the current sociopolitical change unfolding across the US, Canada, and the world, we wish to encourage and support clubs across the country in beginning their journey towards integrating justice, equity, diversity and inclusivity into the core of what they do.
In 2018 we hosted a symposium in conjunction with the NSMBA called “Diversity in Mountain Biking” – the focus of this symposium was to provide space for voices that are not often heard within the sphere of mountain bike advocacy – people of colour, the LGBTQ2+ community, first nations, women and youth.
From this symposium a google drive was created containing collected resources provided by organizers, presenters and attendees. We would like to share the drive with the public at this time in order to encourage and support individuals and organizations to begin re-framing the national context of recreation advocacy.
The drive can be accessed at the following link which we encourage you to share publicly with other organizations, your friends, your family and anyone else who may be interested in undertaking this kind of work: Diversity in Mountain Biking Resource Base.
If you have any questions about the content of this drive, wish to contribute resources to it or simply want to talk about these issues and why the matter in the world of recreation advocacy please feel free to reach out to Justin Darbyshire, IMBA Canada Field Programs Coordinator and BC Council Chair.