Geography of Hope raises funds and provides scholarships to students in financial need to participate in life-changing domestic and international outdoor, adventure, and travel expeditions. Geography of Hope scholarships recipients participate in trips run by Program Providers.
The name of Geography of Hope comes from a line in Wallace Stegner’s 1960 famous Wilderness Letter on the importance of federal protection of wild places. The letter was used to introduce the Wilderness Act, which established the National Wilderness Preservation System in 1964. It concluded as follows:
“We simply need that wild country available to us... For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”
Geography of Hope is dedicated to exposing students to a bigger world and giving them tools to improve it and to carve out their own brighter future. We believe that life-changing experiential learning-based expeditions can unleash students’ potential and give them the chance write new stories for themselves.
A gift to Geography of Hope offers tangible and direct impact: our scholarship students return from their adventure with a deeper understanding of how to be responsible leaders, active members of their communities and stewards of our earth.