Gear
Gear manufacturers have realised that lots of women like the outdoors and they're different shapes from men. Here's what's out there, and where you can buy it.
Finances
If you’re a keen follower of GO! Girls Outdoors, you might have noticed a small addition to the site, nestled in amongst the fantastic profiles, wonderful articles and lists of extremely useful resources. Yes - I held off for quite some time, but I’ve finally decided that it’s necessary to put some advertising on the website. For those people interested, here is the financial story of GO! Girls Outdoors.The website was initially funded by a scholarship I received from three organisations within the Queensland Government - Recreation Training Queensland, the Queensland Outdoor Recreation Federation and the Department of Local Government Planning, Sport and Recreation Queensland. This scholarship was associated with the course I completed last year to obtain my Diploma in Outdoor Recreation, which was a Cadetship Program funded by the organisations that provided the scholarship. The Cadetship was a trial program aimed at increasing the skills of Queensland Outdoor Industry workers, and the scholarship was to be used for furthering skills and knowledge, or to create a project that would be beneficial for the Outdoor Industry.
The scholarship I received covered the costs involved in setting up the website, along with a study/information gathering trip to the USA and Canada. I spent two months in North America in early 2009 visiting people, gathering information, writing profiles and promoting the resource. The trip was a great success, and as a result readership is almost as high in the US and Canada as it is in Australia.
I am passionate about continuing to maintain and develop the GO! Girls Outdoors resource and have continued updating the website since I returned to Australia in May, 2009. However, the money from the scholarship has been spent (as it was intended to be) and was never going to be an ongoing source of funding.
At the moment the website is funded by me alone. The maintenance of the website (to current standards) takes at least two days per week of my time, and the development of specific projects takes more than this. There are also the costs associated with promotion, the internet, a place to work, web hosting, paying the web designer, hardware such as printers and stationary, travel for promotion and so on - all of which comes out of my pocket at the moment.
The future of GO! Girls Outdoors relies very heavily on me locating sources of funding for the resource. There are many avenues to explore, some of which you will see in action already - the Donate button and the advertisements from Google. I also have a sponsorship and advertising package put together - contact me if you would like a copy.
GO! Girls Outdoors has received an overwhelming amount of support from a wide range of people, including teachers, members of the Outdoor Industry, organisations, universities and ‘weekend warriors’, and it reaches a world-wide audience. I am dedicated to continuing the resource in any way I can and I will do my best to make sure this happens.
Please contact me if you can help in any way, either financially or by helping to increase reader numbers.
Together we can ensure the future of GO! Girls Outdoors!