What Land Justice Means for Sasamat
From her first role at Sasamat in 2014 to now leading as Executive Director, Kristen Hyodo’s journey is one of transformation, purpose, and passion. What started as temporary move grew into a lifelong commitment to outdoor education, youth leadership, and Land Justice. Today, Sasamat Outdoor Centre thrives under her leadership as a space where young people and Kristen herself continue to grow, learn, and be inspired. See below for a Q&A to learn more about Kristen’s journey.
How did you first become involved with Sasamat Outdoor Centre?
I started with Sasamat back in 2014, when I was hired as the Program Director. I moved to Vancouver from Toronto, with a deep love for summer camps and outdoor education. I took a leap of faith having never been to Vancouver before and moved here for the role at Sasamat thinking I would do it for a year or two, and complete grad school afterwards. However, it did not take me long to realize it wasn’t a role I could do for just a year or two, and I found myself deeply committed to growing the programs, to the staff team and to enriching our community impact. Now, eleven years later I am still here and still loving it. I’ve traded mosquitos and rattle snacks, for black bears and bald eagles. It is not an uncommon scene to find me in my “bear suit”, which includes a metal fan rake in one hand and bear spray in the other and sometimes safety googles on if I am feeling feisty, accompanied by my colleagues Andrew and Ben, as we ever so politely say “hello bear, you are a beautiful being, now please leave”.
Can you share a bit about your connection to camps, people and land
I spent all of my formative years enjoying golden summers at camp as both a camper and staff member. Since I was eight years old, summer camp has always been a place I find a deep sense of belonging and joy. My childhood memories of camp take me back to a place of wonder and awe where I truly believed I was at Hogwarts with all my friends, and my staff memories take me to time of intense learning and personal reward. I was always drawn back to camp by the allure of spending 100% of my time outdoors. I thrived being immersed in that Ontario Canadian shield landscape of lakes, rivers, rocks and mosquitos, and I always felt a deep sense of peace in the outdoors. I lived my summers sunbaked, dehydrated, bug bitten, rising too early and staying up too late. I avoided rattle snacks and outhouses at all costs.
One summer I managed to have an accidental rabies exposure with a group of 7-year girls, leading to an eventful trip to the small community hospital and an unofficial title as the bat chaser – given I was now inoculated. I worked with kids from all walks of life and loved every single moment of it. Over time, I was offered leadership opportunities that were hard to say no to and seemed to keep finding myself in a place of responsibility long before I thought I should be there. But that is camp, we trust young people to do amazing things, and they always rise to the challenge. I have no doubt those early years deep in the camp trenches made me who I am today.
Could you share about Sasamat and its impact in community and on campers/leaders?
Every summer brings new joys, and I continue to struggle to describe the impact Sasamat has on all those lucky enough to spend a little time here. As I wrote in a recent fundraising letter to our community, the bonds formed at camp are deep and lasting, and not inconsequential. We know that for many children and youth summer camp is a protective factor, as well as a joyful escape. The experience is almost immeasurable, however when our staff team says their goodbyes to one another come end of August, the weight of the impact is unmistakeable. I continue to be eternally grateful that I get to bear witness to all our young participants and staff grow and develop in remarkable ways through their time at Sasamat, it truly is a privilege.
How has your life been impacted or transformed personally?
I wholehearted believe in the power of summer camp to help a person find their identity, their people, and their purpose. Sasamat has the responsibility of hiring, training, mentoring and sending off about 65 young adults every summer. Watching their evolution over those two months, and then subsequent seasons, and years is probably my favourite part of this work. I have written so many reference letters for medical school, or law school, or graduate school, or unique job opportunities for the bright people that come and work at Sasamat, and I am always excited to support someone along their journey and hear what our staff get up to years after the fact.
We have always felt honoured to be a “first employer” for most of our youth, and the start of their professional journey. We spend as much time teaching them what it means to be a good employee and have a good employer, as we spend teaching them how to do their jobs because we take it seriously as part of our youth development objectives. This work continually teaches me new things and deeply enriches my own learning and development.
Young people are incredible fountains of energy, ideas, ridiculous requests and so much more, and it is quite something to be in the middle of all that on a regular basis. I would say it keeps me engaged, and curious and constantly questioning - how can we do better?
ANHBC has been on a journey of transformation since 2021, what has that meant to you? How have you been involved?
Watching and participating in ANHBC’s unconventional strategic transformation has been an interesting and exciting process. It has been liberating to see an organization throw the rulebook out the window and let the process be truly guided by the needs of its community, regardless of what the potential negative impact might be there. The outcome is a beautiful story that represents all of us, and I feel honoured to be a part of an organization willing to go about doing work in this fashion.
As one of the leads of the Land Justice Strategic Direction, could you share what that has meant to you?
After completing a Leadership thesis researching how to support organizations to develop environmental sustainability plans, especially when it is not directly mission aligned, it was no surprise that I was tapped on the shoulder to help ANHBC with some of this work. What has come about is the Land Justice Committee. This committee has been busy in an early stage of a change process that is largely centred on developing engagement and awareness across our broad and diverse organization. Together we recently completed a fun summer engagement campaign and are looking ahead to organizing some educational opportunities for ANHBC staff.
On a personal note, advocating and finding ways to protect our natural world through our day-to-day work continues to feel increasingly important. It has become crystal clear to me that summer camps are hosted by mother nature, more so than any leader or organization and we need her to keep doing this work. Summer camps are magical because they predominantly are situated into some of the most beautiful outdoor landscapes Canada has to offer. The outdoors is woven into every facet of the day and are impossible to ignore.
When it rains at Sasamat, suddenly everything and everyone is a soggy rat - literally. When it is sunny and hot, we find ourselves creeping deeper under the forest canopy or diving down farther into the lake looking for the momentary relief from the heat. We are connected to the weather cycles of the natural world, and we live through them good or bad. We don’t have rain days or heat days, we adapt and keep going. It is a part of our work, but also a part of myself. Over my lifespan, the need for environmental protections has grown, and I have enjoyed finding ways that we can more intentionally incorporate this into the work at Sasamat and beyond at ANHBC.
What does or could Land Justice look like for a social serving organization like neighbourhood houses and Sasamat? 
I think the possibilities are endless here, and the scope is big and easily overwhelming. However, so far, the Land Justice committee is taking things one step at a time and using an approach of appreciative inquiry – building on our existing strengths, and finding those intrinsic motivators for our community, and running with them. We have talked about Education and Learning across the organization, a deep systems analysis considering how we can leverage our size to maximize impact around carbon reductions and building out a comprehensive Land Justice plan to follow.
It becomes about weaving the question, “is this good for our planet” into our daily decision making, and asking the follow up question it is not, “what alternatives are presently available or could be available in the future with a bit of work?”. It takes every single person making decisions to put a little mental energy towards thinking about where their bigger negative environmental impacts are, be is transportation or purchasing or building maintenance, and collectively considering what the opportunities are to improve. As well as a commitment to spend some money to be able to do this as well. We have our own house and practices to continue to improve, however we also can play a role in community holding larger actors to account and organizing community action around this topic, as we always do so well. ANHBC is a people organization, we are all about community, and it’s time we expand our definition of community to include wildlife, flora and fauna, air, and water.
What is your dream for transformation for Sasamat?
We truly love Sasamat and all it does and stands for, our dream of transformation is not about tossing aside 63 years of rich history of joyful play and learning on the lake, rather about building on that strong foundation. When it comes to Land Justice and environmental sustainability we must keep trying to improve our practices here. SOC is working on developing an organizational Environmental Sustainability plan piece by piece. 2025 our Green Team identified transportation, food services and education as our largest opportunity spaces for improvement. The means, this is where we believe we have the biggest negative impact as well as the greatest opportunity to shift how we do things, hopefully resulting in positive overall change. We spent the summer collecting some qualitative in-house data and the fall will be focused on analyzing and developing plans for improvement. Next year we will tackle a few more internal areas. We have chosen the approach of working in house first, and then once we feel confident in our operations, turn to a more external community role in this space.
