Escalera Access
Grants Awarded
Escalera Access aims to broaden fair access to quality STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) and outdoor education for New Mexico's diverse learners, including across varying socioeconomic, cultural, and educational backgrounds. Its activities, offered outside of school hours and revolving around outdoor recreation themes, utilize partnerships with local educational and recreational bodies, including Escalera Academy LLC, a provider of curriculum based on Kinesiology, Engineering, and Sustainability (KES) Framework. Fund grants are primarily targeted at facilitating the program delivery and contributing to a Gear Investigation Collection, a set of tangible outdoor recreation equipment used for practical instructional purposes. Through these educational experiences, the program enables participants to identify intersections between STEAM, outdoor recreation, their communities, and future career potentials.
Escalera Access is a newly established Santa Fe-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding access to educational opportunities that use outdoor recreation as a gateway to STEAM learning and career exploration within lesser-known environmental, health, and engineering industries that directly intersect with recreation. Our mission is to reduce financial barriers to participation and help create integrated learning environments where students from across school districts, diverse socio-economic, cultural, and educational backgrounds can learn and grow together in community. These shared experiences help foster social mobility, mutual understanding of our roles as stewards of these lands, and genuine community connection. Escalera Access focuses on out-of-school-time learning opportunities. Through community partnerships, and educational programming, we help ensure more youth can participate in meaningful experiential learning workshops. A recent accomplishment includes receiving a generous grant above our proposed amount from the New Mexico Out-of-School Time Network (NMOST) for the KES Discovery Series, a youth workshop series hosted at various locations across Santa Fe. The series introduces participants to the KES Framework™—Kinesiology, Engineering, and Sustainability—a STEM outdoor pedagogy created by Escalera Academy, LLC that explores what makes recreation possible through human performance, equipment and technology, and environmental stewardship.