More Outdoor News Update: Outward Bound

Filed in archive Outdoor News on March 31, 2008

Here's the best of some really old, yet, important, outdoor news I missed.

Outward Bound Best Place to Work

One of New Zealand's oldest adventure centres, Outward Bound, is the recipient of this years Unlimited Magazine's best place to work award. Competing against 200 other New Zealand companies, and with a staff of just 50, Outward Bound has managed to come out on top. The survey is conducted by workplace survey and analyst specialist JRA. It asked more than 22,500 employees 60 survey questions based around themes including culture and values, common purpose, communication and cooperation, as well as learning and development, performance and recognition.

A Tax to Remember

A coalition of 12 environmental organizations in New Mexico has initiated a new strategy to help get American kids back outdoors. The Environmental Alliance of New Mexico is renewing its call for a one-percent sales tax on televisions and video games to fund outdoor education programs. The tax idea, initiated by the Sierra Club, would raise an estimated $4 million a year, to fund programs aimed at giving school kids an outdoors education. "We believe it is such a nominal tax that consumers won't feel it too much, especially if they are educated about where that money goes," said Michael Casaus, the New Mexico youth representative of the Sierra Club.

A Vanishing Vision

The images are almost too beautiful to be real: silhouetted bicyclists crossing a bridge in Myanmar at sunset, a Thai woman carrying a yoke through an impossibly green forest, Buddhists in Ladakh prostrating in the snow toward a Lamayuru monastery. Viewing images like these on the glossy pages of National Geographic or on the walls of an art gallery, it�s easy to forget that the forms in the image are real people, caught in the act of living their lives.