Our very own Executive Director was awarded Toyota’s Everyday Hero Award. She was selected for her amazing leadership in SheJumps, which has provided countless women the opportunity to gain confidence through outdoor experience. With this award, Claire was given $10,000 for SheJumps to continue our work in encouraging female and youth participation in the outdoors!
From Lynsey Dyer: “Thank you espnW and #ToyotaEverydayHero for honoring SheJumps with a surprise $10k!!!! That will go directly to our programming – increasing kid’s participation in the outdoors! It was surreal to be standing amongst our heros all day long let alone receive an award with them in attendance. I can’t believe how far SheJumps has come, what an honor!!!”
From espnW:
ESPN: What inspires you? Claire: When we first started SheJumps, what was really inspiring to me was helping people realize that you can always start from the beginning, no matter how old you are.
ESPN: What has been your most significant accomplishment? Claire: Personally, in the last two years, allowing myself to stop thinking of SheJumps as a passion project and to start really owning it as my calling and my career. Just knowing that I have a passion for it, and that’s enough to make it legit.
ESPN: What has been your greatest setback, and what have you learned from it? Claire: Listening to people saying, “You can’t do that,” “That’s not a good idea,” or, “There’s so many other organizations out there for women, why do you need something new?” Those naysayers not understanding the breadth of what we’re trying to do, which is even if someone never participates in a SheJumps program, we’re trying to build a vision for a larger community around the world.
ESPN: What does being an Everyday Hero mean to you? Claire: When you have a passion about something that’s something everyone can relate to, ’cause everyone has a passion. So it’s just about standing up and saying, “If I can do this, you can do this, too.”
ESPN: How do you see yourself making an impact in the coming year? Claire: I just hope that there are so many more women that are able to see how valuable the outdoors are for what they can do in their lives, both physically and health-wise, but also mentally in empowering them to really reach out and grab whatever they want in life. I hope this gives us the visibility to really help more women stand up and take that for themselves, as well.