School is out for summer, and for many Pittsburghers, that means more time spent outside: swimming in neighborhood pools, walking shaded trails or biking along the city’s rivers.
Programs like Pittsburgh Park Conservancy’s Outside Voices cohort, geared toward Homewood teens, are equipping students with the experience and skills needed to take advantage of these warm-weather spaces. Students in the program have spent the spring fishing in Lake Carnegie, forest bathing in Squirrel Hill and trying out POGOH’s fleet of e-bikes.
Neil Walker led the cohort’s bike ride from the South Side to Point State Park last month. He’s a Homewood native and certified cycling instructor with the League of American Bicyclists.
“I built a bicycle and it became something that allowed me to get out of my community, go places and see things,” Walker said. “It really allowed me to expand my worldview.”
On his bike, Walker saw other communities in Pittsburgh for the first time, visited the Carnegie museums in Oakland and attended his first baseball game.
“Now I'm starting to see different things,” he added. “Now my imagination comes into play and I'm just imagining going places and doing things.”
The ride was 14-year-old Curtis Bumpass’s first time on the trails. The Westinghouse Academy rising sophomore said he will miss exploring nature with his peers in Outside Voices after the program finishes this month.
Students in the program, based at the Homewood-Brushton YMCA, spent three months participating in nature-based learning, as well as public space revitalization efforts concentrated on nearby Baxter Park.
The cohort coincides with the Park Conservancy’s redevelopment plan for Baxter, located along Frankstown Avenue. City officials and the Park Conservancy finalized an improvement plan for the park last year, and are now moving into the permitting and design phase.
Homewood Children’s Village CEO Walter Lewis said the Outside Voices program is one way the project’s partners are engaging the community to shape the redevelopment initiative.
“Too often development happens or good things happen in the neighborhood, but if you don't engage people, folks may not feel like it was for them,” Lewis said.
The Children’s Village staffs several programs inside Homewood schools and helped the Parks Conservancy recruit teens to join Outside Voices.
“I think this effort is really designed to kind of close the loop in terms of really trying to make sure that we're engaging with all types of folks. We want to see these types of things in our community,” Lewis continued. “Our children deserve the best places to play. Our residents deserve the best places to walk by green spaces that are beautiful. We want those kinds of things, too.”
Outside Voices isn’t the only program engaging Homewood students outdoors. Ruach Bicycle Club teaches neighborhood kids biking and maintenance skills with attention to science, engineering and technology. The Promise Center in Homewood recently received a donation of 30 bikes and has a painted “traffic garden” where students can practice bike safety.
And the Outdoor Inclusion Coalition (OIC) works to create more accessible opportunities for underrepresented youth to experience the wilderness through skiing, camping, rock climbing and more.
Saniy Harris, a rising senior at Pittsburgh CAPA, has been active in both programs. She’s excited to go whitewater rafting and canoeing with OIC this summer, and hopes to go camping with her family.
“You just have to look for things,” Harris said. “If you're not looking to be outside or looking for a community in a space, you're not gonna find it.”
“People claim this stuff doesn't exist in Homewood,” she continued. “I don't think people are looking for it enough.”
But Harris said bike access and repair services have been more limited in her neighborhood since the Wheel Mill closed last year. The 80,000-square-foot indoor bike park closed its Homewood space after taking a financial hit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Unfortunately, there aren't many bike shops in our communities,” Walker said. “So a kid will get a flat and the bike will sit for months, sometimes a year, because maybe mom's working two jobs, doesn't get the chance to go to a bike shop. Because again, they're not in most Black communities.”
Walker said his cycling education programs teach kids both how to ride safely and take care of their bike so that they can continue to ride despite the limited access to services.
He said doing so empowers young people not only to ride bikes, but also to use them as a means of transportation.
“And get into the outdoors and explore the outdoors,” he added. “We're not connected to the land like we used to be, and that's a very important thing for me.”
