Black Kids Adventures- ASRT Partner Spotlight
By Zenovia Stephens
Executive Director
Black Kids Adventures, Inc.
I do this work because I believe access changes lives, but not in the way people sometimes imagine.
Black families have deep, generational ties to rivers, lakes, and outdoor spaces. Throughout history, waterways were essential to how Black communities worked, moved, gathered, and built their lives. Those spaces hold both painful histories and powerful legacies including stories of forced labor, resilience, struggle and joy. Segregation did not take away our ties to the land and water. It restricted who could experience them with freedom and dignity.
What Black Kids Adventures, Inc. exists to do is help reopen those doors so families today can experience the outdoors with confidence, joy, and a strong sense of belonging.
Black Kids Adventures was built on a simple idea: when families explore the outdoors together, they grow stronger as a unit and as part of the outdoor community. Our work is about creating spaces where families can see themselves reflected, supported, and welcomed in places they have always had the right to be.
When we first started offering outdoor programming, we were mainly focused on hiking and family camps, with a paddle event sprinkled in here and there. After attending a Paddle Leadership Academy, we launched Family Paddle Days. The PLA equipped us with new skills in outdoor leadership and paddling that spanned various crafts. It was an impactful and empowering experience that helped us launch a full paddle program focused on families. We didn’t know it at the time, but that program would become one of our most popular and well-loved offerings, bringing participants from as far as Atlanta, Georgia to Huntsville, Alabama to paddle the Tennessee River with Black Kids Adventures.
Over the four years of running this program, one thing became clear. People didn’t need to be convinced. They just needed an invitation.
We have welcomed experienced paddlers who joined just to be part of the community and families who always wanted to try paddling but didn’t have the gear. We’ve seen hesitant families show up to have a new experience together and leave only to become regulars who now join us each season. We have watched a child who was terrified to paddle away from the dock end the session jumping joyfully into the river and then tackling whitewater rafting a few months later. And we’ve seen a dad find the confidence to stand on a paddleboard after watching his son stand with ease.
In each of those moments, we recognized the same truth. The biggest barrier was not lack of interest. It was access to equipment, instruction, and a supportive community that meets people exactly where they are.
Our Family Paddle Program is not designed to turn people into expert paddlers, though many are on their way. It’s designed to create a welcoming entry point that says come as you are and we will figure it out together, because in this community growing as we go is how we flow.
There’s something powerful about watching families get on the water side by side. The smiles, laughs, splashes, and stories make every paddle day richer. One of my favorite things to witness is the moment a nervous parent becomes a proud parent because their child did it. I have been that mom, and I know exactly what that feeling is like.
After our 2025 season, I often think about one participant in particular who registered for a paddle day, showed up, and then began to talk herself out of trying it. After taking a moment and seeing the encouragement around her, she chose to stay. She not only paddled that day, but even tried yoga on a paddleboard. I later learned that experience awakened a new curiosity to explore the outdoors more and invite others to join her.
We have been part of many families and individuals paddling experiences, and as with any adventure, we are always honored to share in those moments.
To wrap up, I want to give a glimpse of what it’s like when Black Kids Adventures hits the water.
On our paddling days, you will see families helping one another adjust PFDs, checking that the person next to them has a leash, cheering for each other as they move their boards, and swapping stories that match the tempo of their strokes. People who started the day as strangers often leave feeling like family, and that sense of belonging is just as important as the experience itself.
For every Family Paddle Day we host, the paddle community grows a little stronger, a little wider and a little more reflective.
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Zenovia Stephens is the Founder and Executive Director of Black Kids Adventures, Inc., where she leads efforts to expand outdoor opportunities for Black families across Alabama and the Southeast. A passionate advocate for representation and community building in outdoor spaces, she partners with organizations and volunteers to help families experience adventure together.
You can learn more about the organization at www.blackkidsadventures.org or follow them on social media to support their work.
