Uber-urban South Philadelphia might seem an unlikely place to find the next generation of naturalists, environmentalists and outdoor aficionados.
But over the past four years, Adam Forbes, founder and director of the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Discovery Pathways, has done exactly that. After early career stops working with migrants, secondary school students and English language learners, Forbes stumbled upon water-based recreation as a catalyst for a diversity of city residents, particularly teenagers, to take an interest in the natural world.
The seed of the idea was personal — Forbes has long been a paddler himself and majored in environmental studies at Pitzer College in California. But things only started to come together after he moved to Philadelphia in 2009 and found work with the Nationalities Service Center, where he helped create community gardens for Nepalese and Burmese immigrants, and the Pennsylvania Migrant Education Program (PAMEP), through which he taught after-school English as a second language classes. Forbes’s manager at PAMEP had a key connection with Pennsylvania state parks.
“They hosted us for two camping trips every summer … as a reward for students who came to summer school,” Forbes says. “It was this kind of blip for our program, but it was the most powerful thing of the year, and a lot of the students who came on those camping trips were the ones who stayed connected to us and graduated on time.”
Forbes later obtained a master’s degree in urban education from the University of Pennsylvania and began teaching health and Spanish at Mastery Charter Schools while staying involved in outdoor programming for kids on the side. It wasn’t until funding cuts curtailed PAMEP’s offerings and community leaders from diverse ethnic groups started reaching out to Forbes about ongoing opportunities for outdoor recreation, though, that he realized just how valuable such programming is to so many. In particular, surveys Forbes conducted to gauge public interest revealed an untapped appetite for water recreation.
“A lot of people said they had an interest in accessing the water but didn’t know how. Boating is something they saw but was out of reach for them.”
— Adam Forbes, founder and director of Discovery Pathways
“A lot of people said they had an interest in accessing the water but didn’t know how,” Forbes says. “Boating is something they saw but was out of reach for them.”
So he and a few other volunteers collected some “broken rowboats” from a shuttering youth program and began hosting informal events at the lake at Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Park in South Philly. Then, during the COVID shutdown in 2020, Forbes found the time to formally launch Discovery Pathways as a nonprofit.
Buoyed by grant money from the William Penn Foundation, the growth since has been impressive. Paddle sessions that once attracted a few dozen participants now have hundreds. Forbes has upped his fleet to include dozens of kayaks, rowboats, canoes and paddleboards. A slick website shows off the free fishing and paddling days Discovery Pathways regularly hosts at FDR Park, in addition to the organization’s urban gardening, wellness, environmental education and field trip programs for public schools.
The nonprofit’s financial growth — tax records show $25,000 in revenue in 2021 ballooning to $290,000 in 2024 — enabled Forbes to both leave his teaching job to become Discovery Pathways’ first full-time employee and compensate students for their work organizing paddling days. In 2024 the nonprofit also launched a youth dragon boat team to compete in local regattas. The team’s slogan: “They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.”
Forbes says he has been amazed to see the growth of the kids in the program. On one paddling day at FDR this summer, veteran participants — high school juniors and seniors, some preparing to major in environmental studies in college — oversaw the bulk of the operations as younger members trained visitors of all ages on proper paddling technique and launched them from a dock. Forbes stood by just keeping an eye on things, marveling at what he — and a few associates — have built.
An amazing nonprofit that serves so many. Not mentioned in the piece was the support Discovery Partways provides with college admissions, including guidance in completing admission essays, applying for scholarships etc.