the ripple effect bursary
A step towards increasing financial access to outdoors spaces.
It all begins with intention,
and from the very beginning, our intention at Braiding Rivers has been to make outdoors travel more accessible.
While we honour the value of our work at Braiding Rivers, and our trip costs reflect this, we recognize that outdoor travel is prohibitively expensive for so many women+. In order to reduce financial barriers, we have dreamt up The Ripple Effect Bursary, which will go to subsidizing the cost of a Braiding Rivers trip for women+ who would normally not have the resources to do so.
Our goal is to offset the cost for women+ to go on a Braiding Rivers trip. By clicking the Donate Now button, you will be routed to The Ripple Effect Bursary page on Go Fund Me’s platform. From there, you can donate whenever, wherever and for however much you feel called to donate.
Thank you for being here with us.
Swag for a good cause
We love good swag just like any other good outdoorsperson and we want ours to have some heart, so we decided to put 100% of the profits from our swag sales go into The Ripple Effect Bursary.
We also want to put our money where our values are, so we try to buy from companies that embody what we believe in. Our swag comes from a variety of different companies that are innovative, female-led, BIPOC-led, environmentally conscious and/or local. Currently, we’re stocking Anian Mgf., Spark Pottery, Absolute Rubbish and Dust City Designs Stickers.
Check it out here and know that when you buy any of our swag, you’re contributing to getting women+ out on the Land.
apply for the bursary
Applications for summer 2024 recipients of The Ripple Effect Bursary are not yet open and we will let you know when they open up!
Please read before applying:
Our trip costs represent the true cost of the labour and resources required to safely run whitewater trips. This bursary fund is intended to promote accessibility to river trips for women+ facing economic hardships and therefore financial barriers to joining. It is intended for women+ that would otherwise not be able to afford to attend.
Through this, our intentions are to contribute to economic justice, which has been heavily disrupted by the intersecting systems of oppression that exist within a white supremacist, patriarchal, colonial capitalist society.
When considering your request for bursary funds, we invite you to reflect on your own proximity to institutional and generational privilege and wealth. We borrow from Alex J. Cunning's thoughts on their blog on sliding scales, which we think is an excellent discussion on accessibility and a guide for reflecting on individual access to wealth.
This bursary application is built on trust — only you know your situation — so we will take any requests in good faith and will try to support as many bursary applications as our funds allow. While we may not be able to fund all that you ask for (based on other applications), we will do our best to provide as much support as we can.
If your application is selected, we will notify you shortly thereafter if you have been approved.