Hats off to the Women of Winter and PSIA-AASI who partnered over the 2021-22 season to offer five events certifying 30 women of color and welcoming them into PSIA-AASI’s educational community. The ongoing program encourages and supports BIWOC women to pursue opportunities to teach skiing or snowboarding. This video celebrates and shares the story of inspiring women who embraced the opportunity to create adventures through education. Incredible program, incredible women.
Empowering Women Leaders in Snowsports
Women of Winter and PSIA-AASI joined forces to host 5 instructor education events for Black, Indigenous, Women of Color to obtain a PSIA-AASI alpine or snowboard Level I instructor certification. We’re providing 30 scholarships total for BIWOC to learn the skills and education to help share their knowledge and passion of skiing or snowboarding with their communities!
The Why
BIPOC women and girls are the most excluded and underrepresented demographic in snowsports. We are a group of diverse women in snowsports that want to see a change in our industry. So we are being the change we want to see…and that change is more BIPOC women and girls on the hill. How do we plan to do this?
Visible Role Models
Representation matters. Seeing others that look like you doing things you want to do makes you believe you can do it too. Our scholarship recipients from last year are already making inroads to becoming BIPOC women leaders in the snowsports industry – with almost all of them teaching this winter. Our goal, through education, community and support, is to create and empower dozens of BIPOC women leaders in the snowsports industry each winter.
Education
We are strong believers in education and that education affords us with the skills, abilities and confidence to stand in our truth and own our authority. We want to empower women and girls to feel comfortable on the hill. We want to create change-makers. This year we are partnering with PSIA-AASI to provide five Level 1 Snowsports scholarship events around the country. We want to get BIPOC women and girls on the hill and provide them with the education to feel confident in their skiing skill sets. Many of us at Women of Winter are ski and snowboard instructors who have worked in resorts around the world. Our snowsports instructor careers (full or part time) have afforded us the opportunities to work in different countries, learn different languages, teach and meet people of every background, and above all, trained us to become strong skiers who can also share our love and knowledge of snowsports with our community.
Community
Visible role models help us see what is possible from afar, but our community is who calls and picks us up on a Saturday morning to get fresh tracks, plans that ladies ski weekend, films our epic first jump and celebrates all the ups and laughs at all the downs over drinks at apres. That community also has to feel relatable and safe. The PSIA-AASI Level 1 Course and Exam will be entirely composed of BIPOC women and our hope is for these women to become their own community and to use the education they receive to also be the change they want to see in our industry by welcoming and bringing in other BIPOC women and girls into our snowsports community.
Eliminating Barriers to Entry
Snowsports has a lot of barriers to entry. From feeling like you don’t belong or aren’t sendy enough to just being plain expensive. We have teamed up with visionary leaders in the snowsports industry to help eliminate as many of the monetary barriers to entry as possible.