Anthony Owosekun

Anthony is closing the nature gap in Germany by equipping children and youth with opportunities to experience nature within safe, supportive communities while dismantling institutional barriers that obstruct Black participation and leadership. In a country where the cultural ownership of nature remains largely confined to the majority population, Anthony is forging pathways for Black communities—and, subsequently, other communities of color—to reclaim and co-steward natural spaces.

Natural spaces hold a critical cultural and psychological value in Europe due to rapid urbanization. European countries are known to enable access to nature as part of school programs, public trekking paths, and community-led nature activities, which combine aspects of travel, recreation, sports, and environmental conservation. Anthony is tackling a critical gap in this system which is the lack of participation and belonging of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPoC) in these settings, caused by institutional and cultural barriers. Starting with Black children and youth, Anthony opens pathways of participation for marginalized communities in the natural spaces of Germany and beyond.

Access to nature can have long term health benefits, while engaging in group activities in nature can enhance leadership and community organizing skills, especially at a young age. However, existing outdoor communities and spaces in Europe are not always the most welcoming to marginalized groups. This creates a culture where Black families do not join nature clubs, let alone organize their own outings in nature. Anthony works to break this cycle by, first, creating safe, empowering spaces where Black children and youth can experience and connect to nature, giving them the tools and skills to become leaders and changemakers in this field, and then by dismantling barriers in overall society to ensure safe spaces of nature engagement for all marginalized groups.

Anthony underlines an important bias in the system: Most individuals as well as public organizations and outdoor gear companies assume that nature is open to everyone because it is free and available to anyone who wishes to enjoy it. However, invisible barriers persist; thus, a conscious effort is needed to turn nature activities and communities into safe spaces for all. Starting from nature and youth clubs and scaling to overall society, Anthony dismantles the barriers of entry to natural spaces for people of color, ensuring that these institutions can become truly welcoming and sensitive to the needs and realities of marginalized communities and helping them realize the invisible barriers that may exist in their organizational culture.

Anthony is scaling EMPOCA’s vision through partner organizations. Thanks to EMPOCA’s open-source resources on the subject and Anthony’s continued thought leadership, a new anti-racist paradigm is being built in environmental and sustainable movements in Germany.

The exclusion of BIPoC from nature-based experiences in Germany is not incidental — it is systemic, historically embedded, and institutionally reproduced.
Colonial narratives devalued Indigenous ecological knowledge and framed land through Eurocentric hierarchies of ownership, purity, and belonging. In the 20th century, elements of the early environmental movement were entangled with nationalist and fascist ideologies that linked nature, identity, and exclusion. While modern conservation has evolved, this legacy has never been fully confronted. Cultural codes of who “naturally belongs” in outdoor spaces continue to shape participation, representation, and leadership today.
Across Germany the environmental and outdoor sector remains overwhelmingly white, particularly in leadership roles, educational institutions, conservation governance, and public representation. The consequences are measurable: 65% of BIPoC in Germany report experiencing discrimination in everyday life , and the same percentage report discrimination in outdoor environments. 70% state that outdoor culture limits their sense of belonging.
This means that for a significant portion of the migrant German population, public nature spaces are not perceived as neutral civic commons, but as socially coded environments where safety and belonging cannot be assumed.
At the same time, the rise of far-right movements and increasing political polarization across German-speaking Europe is shrinking civic space. Rural regions and public outdoor areas are not insulated from these dynamics. Hate speech, racial profiling, and symbolic territorial claims are becoming more visible. For marginalized youth in particular, anticipated discrimination directly influences mobility, participation, and self-confidence.
Nature conservation associations, structured through nationwide local chapters, are among the primary gatekeepers of environmental participation in the region. Collectively reaching approximately 11 million members — around 13% of the population — they shape youth programs, conservation efforts, and recreational culture. Yet their leadership and institutional culture remain predominantly white and Eurocentric. Without structural reform, these institutions risk unintentionally reinforcing exclusion at scale.
Access to nature is strongly linked to mental health stabilization, resilience, leadership development, and environmental stewardship. At a time of escalating climate crisis, youth mental health strain, and democratic fragmentation, excluding BIPoC youth from nature-based participation weakens preventive wellbeing infrastructure, narrows environmental literacy and climate leadership pipelines, and undermines social cohesion. Communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change and social inequality remain underrepresented in shaping environmental futures.
Yet this moment also presents an opportunity. As environmental institutions confront declining membership and growing societal complexity, they have a choice: to defend inherited structures, or to reimagine belonging in nature as a shared civic foundation. Inclusive environmental leadership is a prerequisite for democratic resilience and sustainable climate action. Without intentional structural transformation, the sector risks deepening historic divides. With it, nature can become what it was always meant to be: a commons that strengthens wellbeing, shared responsibility, and collective futures for all.

Anthony developed a two-pillar strategy to equip and enable Black people to reclaim their place in natural spaces while educating majority culture to adopt anti-colonial and anti-racist practices. In doing so, EMPOCA not only empowers Black children and youth, but also changes nature communities from within thus opening doors for other marginalized communities.

As the first step of their strategy, Anthony utilizes outdoor experiences where Black children go out in nature with a group of peers, and Black youth and adult mentors serves as visible role models. These Young mentors are trained carefully to ensure EMPOCA experiences result in an increased sense of leadership, confidence, and self-efficacy in nature as well as an increased awareness on environmental issues among the participants. When in nature, anything can be an opportunity for EMPOCA leaders to support participants’ skills development, be it building tents, navigating trails, or preparing meals together. A key step in equipping youth and young adults for this role was creating the first German-language learning program for inclusive outdoor education, with support from the Bosch Foundation. Anthony is already sharing the content of this learning program with other BIPoC youth organizations to help them change the way they facilitate outdoor activities.

EMPOCA’s outdoor programs span from overnight camps to daily events, depending on the availability of natural spaces as well as the safety level in the specific region. Participants of activities are found through word-of-mouth and socia-media-outreach. Most families recommend EMPOCA activities to other parents once their kids join one of the sessions. There is usually an average attendance fee for the programs to ensure parents’ intention in sending their children to EMPOCA activities.

The second part of the strategy focuses on shifting the way existing nature communities (especially membership-based youth organizations and nature clubs) understand access to and belonging in nature. To drive lasting change in the institutions that are most important to preserving, protecting and accessing nature requires transforming the culture and practices of established institutions that are key to influencing the majority population. Anthony collaborates with selected nature communities to help them remove barriers to participation for People of Color. Through workshops, consultations and collaborations on staff or member trainings, Anthony’s strategy creates a win-win scenario: Nature communities benefit from revitalized, more diverse memberships, while children and families from marginalized backgrounds gain access to enriching outdoor experiences. By working from within these institutions, Anthony is driving a cultural shift - helping organizations recognize the value of diversity and setting new standards for equity and belonging in the environmental sector. In doing so, he is advancing his greater vision: that everyone, regardless of their social, ethnic or cultural background, should feel safe, belonging and empowered in nature.

Having seen the positive impact of transforming organizations in affecting their members’ practices, Anthony decided to approach the private sector as well, especially the outdoor gear companies. These companies shape the narrative of the outdoor sector with their marketing and PR campaigns, they sponsor/ organize events in nature, they engage with a lot of young people as part of their sales channels. By helping these companies develop more inclusive language and anti-racist practices, Anthony is aiming to influence their customer base’s beliefs, too.

To date, 1,500 children and youth have participated in EMPOCA’s programs. 75 camp facilitators have completed their training while 30 young adults have joined EMPOCA’s Black Nature Heroes program which aims to build a talent pipeline for the nature conservancy field. As of 2025, there is a waiting list of ten thousand children and young people to join EMPOCA’s activities signaling a growing demand for EMPOCA programs. On the institutional level, Anthony has successfully co-created new national Guidelines for sustainable educational work in BUND children's groups and BUND Jugend , an environmental youth organization with 82.000 members in Germany, ensuring that anti-racist practices and language are embedded in the organization’s educational materials. Anthony and EMPOCA volunteers will work with nature conservation associations and youth organizations to help them identify the invisible barriers they might reinforce in their communities, and tackle those.

In the coming years, Anthony aims to have fifty partner organizations who commit to EMPOCA practices in their programs. Another goal is to reach 500 multipliers through train the trainer activities. In this scaling model, EMPOCA’s open-source knowledge materials play an important role. Anthony’s long-term vision is to ensure access to nature for all groups in society, equip the institutions with tools to support this vision, and eventually have EMPOCA youth sitting at leadership of conservation organizations – working towards equity and inclusion in the environmental field.

Anthony’s parents moved to Germany from Nigeria when he was in elementary school. Growing up in a Christian immigrant home, Anthony spent most of his childhood indoors studying for school. When he was 10, he convinced his parents to pay for his first nature experience which was a scout camp organized by their church. This experience sparked his love for nature, yet it also exposed him to the subtle racism present in such environments, as he often felt alienated by the group leaders' comments and jokes. These early experiences in nature-based settings – both its positive and healing effects as well as the exclusion and discomfort he faced – left a lasting impression on him. Later, as Anthony pursued a career in social work and education, he was reminded of the profound impact nature had on students facing challenges and limited future prospects. However, he also observed a lack of diversity in outdoor spaces, which mirrored his own childhood experiences. These first hand experiences coupled with his academic pursuits laid the foundation of his work at EMPOCA.

Recognizing that true environmental justice requires the active inclusion of diverse experiences, Anthony founded EMPOCA to provide Black children and youth with opportunities to experience nature in a safe and empowering environment. However, a turning point came in 2023, when Anthony was interviewed by Germany’s leading news outlet, Der Spiegel, on his work with EMPOCA and why it is needed. After the interview was posted on social media with a malicious headline, all of EMPOCA’s social media channels were flooded with hate messages. This only served to make Anthony more convinced of his mission: the negative reactions and hate comments showed how important it is to have safe spaces for Black children and youth, as these were partly the same reactions that Black children and parents experience when they are out in nature. However, Anthony then realized that safer spaces are not enough: only through the systemic work of shifting mindsets and practices in mainstream society will the outdoors be truly welcoming and inclusive for all. Since then, Anthony has become a prominent thought partner and advocate for diversity and inclusion in the European outdoor field, speaking on large stages at conferences such as the European Outdoor Summit, Blue Earth Summit, and ISPO Munich (the world’s largest sports trade show). EMPOCA is part of national and international networks such as Sports for Development Network Germany, Future Skills Alliance and the European Outdoor Group.