During the fall of 2021, Project Good students identified a lot of problems in our community. The Outdoor Accessibility group chose to work on the problem of what accessibility to the outdoors means for our community.
The group ideated about different problems in outdoor accessibility, and a few groups formed as a result of the ideation sessions. One of the smaller groups decided to focus on outdoor accessibility for horseback riders. As they looked around the community for a problem relating to this, they changed directions slightly after discovering that there were other problems that needed help.
The issue they found was about an area of untouched open space facing the possibility of becoming an industrial park. This was a problem because it would affect a lot of peoples houses, hobbies, passions, and interests. The industrial park would make it unsafe for the Western Riding Club, the native wildlife, and the air quality. They went on many site visits and reached out to the Boise Open Space Alliance (BOSA) where they had an interview with the leader, Gregg Russell.
They came away from the interview with the idea of speaking at a public hearing concerning the proposal of CAR-00037. The group then spent multiple weeks creating the testimonies they would share. As the date approached, some of the team sent in testimonies, some of them spoke online, and some went in person. The hearing was very informative and they learned a lot about the issue while getting to share their own opinions and seeing the local community's reaction.
Their next step was testifying at the final hearing and spreading the word to other people about how they can write their own testimonies. Although the other hearing got postponed, they still shared the poster they made about the topic with the rest of Project Good.
