How Did They Do It? Women for Healthy Rural Living’s Accessible Outdoor Programming

In 2023, the Onion Foundation collaborated with Northeast University’s Roux Institute to develop and launch the Intrapreneurship for Nonprofits program, an initiative designed to help nonprofits create earned-revenue streams.

Several of the participating organizations have since established income streams that help support their mission-based work. For Milbridge’s Women for Healthy Rural Living (WHRL), however, the program offered tools for advancing two aspects of its work:an earned-income project and more accessible community-oriented programming.

As described by Experience Coordinator Lizzie Cunningham, WHRL’s focus has been on promoting the health and well-being of the woman, her family, and her community for more than two decades. Now, with a broader toolbox of community discovery techniques thanks to the Intrapreneurship Program, the WHRL team has begun listening directly to community members with disabilities and applying what they’ve learned to make their programming more accessible for all.

An Evolution Grounded in Community

The current spirit of WHRL harkens back to its initial identity as a health lending library, a place for ensuring more people have access to the information and resources they need to live fulfilling lives. The activities that support this spirit, however, have evolved over time.

Today, WHRL offers workshops on various health topics, cooking classes, crafting meet-ups, and book clubs. It also maintains a series of nature trails throughout the area, including the Milbridge Commons Wellness Park and gardens.

“The gardens are a perfect metaphor for the type of work we do,” says Cunningham. “They’re a place to connect people with the outdoors, with each other, with nutritious food, and with educational programming.”

Through WHRL’s Outdoor Women Lead (OWL) program, participants hike along land preserves to learn about the local ecology of the Milbridge area. The Owlette program allows younger girls to do the same, while exploring the gardens of Milbridge Commons Wellness Park.

What Can Come Out of Listening

Everything WHRL does is centered around meeting the needs of the Milbridge community — which makes listening to the town’s people vital.

“We prioritize getting community members’ opinions about the work we do and what we could do better,” says Cunningham. “We want to be as responsive as we can to community needs because we are the community, too.”

According to the U.S. census, 11.7% of people under 65 in Maine live with a disability, and Washington County has the second-highest percentage of people with disabilities of all counties in the state. That’s 23% of the county’s population that Cunningham was determined to serve better.

Having learned various customer discovery techniques in the Intrapreneurship program, COO Susan Jordan Bennett advised Cunningham on creating a framework for interviewing community members with disabilities who were interested in the OWL program but needed accommodations for meaningful participation. Together, Bennett and Cunningham crafted questions for one-on-one conversations that generated more expansive discussions than previous organizational surveys had allowed.

These conversations illuminated several realities that interviewees face — and the WHRL team has quickly sprung into action to address them.

Program Descriptions

For many of the interviewees, trail and activity descriptions matter more than abled-bodied participants might think. The type of trail, the various routes, the level of incline, how high people will need to pick up their feet, bathroom accessibility — these elements all influence whether some community members with disabilities are able to participate in the activity.

Without robust and transparent descriptions, many people with disabilities don’t know whether they can or should participate, leaving many to not sign up at all.

Since the conversations, the WHRL team has overhauled their descriptions to be far more detailed. “This was a good moment for me to think about what’s actually useful in a description for someone who wants to go on a trail,” says Cunningham.

Program Content

After learning that participants with disabilities needed low-movement OWL programs, Cunningham added two shorter accessible trail hikes, using Maine Trail Finder’s rating system and language to describe the routes accurately.

Registration Accessibility

One of the interviewees explained that each day brings different mental and physical stressors for some people with disabilities, making it difficult to commit to pre-registration. “Drop-ins lower the stakes and the pressure,” explains Cunningham.

WHRL has since partnered with local organizations to add more drop-in programming to its lineup. In the spring, the organization worked with Maine Seacoast Mission to offer family activities on Saturdays. And come Halloween, WHRL will launch a seasonal drop-in program at a local elementary school for families to learn about creepy, crawly outdoor creatures.

Four Lessons Learned From WHRL’s Accessibility Work

As Cunningham notes, WHRL is only at the beginning of its accessibility journey — but a beginning rich with action and possibility. Here’s how the WHRL team has made a big impact in a short amount of time.

1. Stay Adaptable

Creating accessible programming isn’t a one-and-done effort. It’s an always-on perspective that requires organizations to adapt as new needs arise. Cunningham regularly asks a few critical questions to stay flexible and adaptable: Should WHRL include accessible activities within the OWL program or as a separate initiative altogether? Should the organization move accessible programming indoors? How can WHRL reach a distinct subset of an already small population?

Answering these questions requires a bit of trial and error as well as a willingness to listen closely to people with disabilities, sometimes even on the go. When one person requested a standup paddleboard — equipment that would be easier on the person’s joints — during a kayaking excursion, for example, the WHRL team quickly adapted to include the gear and training needed to help that person meaningfully participate.

2. Start Small, Then Build Outward

Starting with the OWL program enabled the WHRL team to build an accessibility approach that they could then apply to all other programs. The team came to better understand how features like movement breaks during programs could benefit not only participants with disabilities in programs specially designed to be accessible but also people participating across all of their activities — pregnant people who needed to use the restroom, people with invisible disabilities, or those who simply wanted time to collect themselves.

3. Connect With the People

Prioritizing one-on-one interviews over more widespread surveys allowed Cunningham to connect directly with potential program participants with disabilities, many of whom were Cunningham’s friends and fellow community members. “It gave them time to share their experience without the more prescriptive questions,” explains Cunningham. “People were able to provide a more complete picture of their needs.”

That community connection also extends to program outreach. Knowing that pre-registration can be difficult for many people, Cunningham calls or texts the community members she knows to encourage them to join upcoming accessible events and provide more details. For Cunningham, there’s power in that connection, a connection that creates trust and facilitates transparency over time.

For community listening to work well, Cunningham recommends building on the trust that’s already there: “The people we interviewed knew that I was a trusted community member with their best interests at heart. There are other ways to create that support, like working with another organization that people trust. It’s really important for people to be able to be vulnerable about their experiences.”

4. Look for Models of Success

Maine Trail Finder’s digital trail maps — with detailed descriptions and accessibility ratings — are shining examples of accessibility in practice. And they served as perfect resources for Cunningham as she overhauled WHRL’s outdoor activity descriptions.

This is just one way Cunningham turned to other organizations for models of what effective accessibility looks like. Her advice? “Ground yourself in what other people are doing. Subscribe to all the newsletters! We’re really lucky in Maine because there’s a lot of great organizations already doing this work.”