Keen has announced its five primary Hybrid.Care partners for 2010: American Whitewater, Big City Mountaineers, The Conservation Alliance, Leave No Trace and Waterkeeper Alliance. Created in 2004, Hybrid.Care supports social and environmental organizations that have paved the way for change through community, education and understanding. Since the program’s inception, Keen has partnered with more than 20 global environmental, conservation and social non-profit organizations, and has distributed more than $5 million.

{gallery}2010/may/9-15/climbagainst{/gallery} Osprey Packs has announced its fifth year of sponsoring Climb Against the Odds, the Breast Cancer Fund’s annual mountaineering expedition for breast cancer prevention. From June 13 to 19, 2010, a team of 26 women and men who have been touched by cancer will attempt to summit the 14,179-foot Mount Shasta, located in Northern California. Through this year’s climb, the Breast Cancer Fund hopes to raise $400,000 to support the policy initiatives, corporate accountability campaigns and other innovative programs that aim to stop breast cancer before it starts.

 

Morsel Munk, LLC is accepting applications for a $1,500 scholarship to Outdoor Nation Youth Summit and Festival June 19th and 20th in Central Park, NYC. The scholarship covers travel and lodging expenses and meal stipends. This event will invite young people from across the country with a common mission: to champion the outdoors and start a youth-driven movement. Morsel Munk will sponsor one Ambassador who will represent their company’s philosophy at the summit, and more importantly lead peer youth in reengaging with the outdoors in their communities.

Oboz Footwear today announced its sponsorship of “Connecting the Gems,” an ecological expedition by explorer-filmmakers Deia Schlosberg and Gregg Treinish. Schlosberg and Treinish—named 2008 National Geographic Adventurers of the Year for Across the Andes, the first recorded trek of the 7800-mile spine of the Andes—will collect data and document the ecological connectivity between two largely intact wildlife regions: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Montana and Wyoming, and the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho. Schlosberg and Treinish will depart on their journey on July 6, 2010 from the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park near Cody, Wyoming and will walk westward for six weeks, traversing a distance of approximately 400 miles. Their journey will end near Elk City, Idaho.

Optic Nerve, manufacturer of sports sunglasses, has donated 450 pairs of sunglasses to Big City Mountaineers, a nonprofit whose mission is to enhance the lives of under-resourced urban teens through transformative outdoor experiences. The donation, more than $15,000 in retail value, is enough to provide sunglasses to each teen on BCM’s projected 40 weeklong wilderness expeditions in 2010, and give sunglasses to 150 of BCM’s top fundraisers. This summer,Big City Mountaineers will deliver 40 wilderness expeditions in California, Colorado, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and the Pacific Northwest, providing profound outdoor experiences to teens from the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis and Chicago.

Kigo Footwear, a small company offering eco-friendly minimalist footwear, has donated more than 600 pairs of shoes to help with recovery efforts related to the recent earthquake in Haiti. The company is working through Soles4Souls, the international charity dedicated to providing free footwear to people in desperate need.

Wisconsin Pharmacal Company, the manufacturer of Potable Aqua water purification tablets, has partnered with numerous worldwide relief organizations and the U.S. Army to assist those recently affected by the devastating earthquake in Haiti. The company has already donated nearly 300,000 purification tablets to the Haitian relief effort.

Following the devastating 7.0 earthquake in Haiti earlier this month, Hi-Tec donated 900 pairs of boots and shoes to Soles4Souls. These products will be distributed to victims of the earthquake so they are able to reconstruct their lives safely.