Tennessee Outdoor Hope Foundation
Every Young Person Deserves Somewhere to Belong.
Tennessee Outdoor Hope Foundation is building a community where at-risk and disadvantaged young people can experience the outdoors, develop meaningful relationships with trusted mentors, learn new skills, and discover that their circumstances do not have to determine their future.
HuntingFishingConservationMentorshipLeadershipAdventure
Why it matters
Sometimes One Experience Changes Everything.
For a young person navigating instability, adversity, foster care, difficult family circumstances, isolation, or uncertainty about the future, a weekend in the outdoors can mean far more than recreation.
It can mean discovering independence.
Meeting an adult who listens.
Learning patience.
Developing confidence.
Experiencing accomplishment.
Sitting beside a campfire and realizing you belong somewhere.
We're not building a program for young people. We're building a community around them.
Our Mission
To create life-changing outdoor experiences for Tennessee youth.
To create life-changing outdoor experiences, trusted mentorship, leadership development, and meaningful community for at-risk and disadvantaged youth across Tennessee.
Through partnerships with ranchers, landowners, conservation organizations, businesses, volunteers, youth-serving agencies, mentors, veterans, first responders, outdoor professionals, and communities across Tennessee, we intend to provide young people opportunities they may otherwise never experience.
Our programs will use the outdoors as a vehicle for something larger:
Confidence · Responsibility · Resilience · Connection · Purpose · Hope
Our Vision
A Tennessee where a young person's circumstances never determine the limits of their future.
Our long-term vision is a statewide network of outdoor mentors, host ranches, landowners, youth organizations, donors, conservation partners, and volunteers united behind one simple belief: every young person deserves someone in their corner.
Experience
A first weekend outdoors.
Relationship
An adult who keeps showing up.
Confidence
Proof they can do hard things.
Leadership
Responsibility for others.
Future
A path they can see themselves on.
Deven Wallace
Founder | Operation Orphans Alumnus
Founder's Story
Bringing Home What Once Gave Me Hope
Long before Tennessee Outdoor Hope Foundation was an idea, its mission was personal. As a young person, Deven Wallace participated in Operation Orphans in Texas.
For Deven, it wasn't simply an opportunity to hunt. It was an opportunity to step away from difficult circumstances and experience the outdoors in an environment built around encouragement, responsibility, mentorship, and belonging.
“I know what it feels like to be the kid on the other side of this mission. I also know the impact that one opportunity, one mentor, one weekend, or one person believing in you can have. Tennessee Outdoor Hope exists because I want other young people to experience the same kind of hope that others once gave me.”
Deven's vision is not merely to recreate an outdoor program. It is to build a community around young people — landowners, mentors, veterans, first responders, conservationists, business leaders, outdoor professionals, families, volunteers, donors, and ordinary Tennesseans willing to say:
“You matter, and we're investing in your future.”
Read our storyThe Model
It Takes a Community.
Tennessee Outdoor Hope Foundation is being designed around a simple idea: we don't have to own every resource required to help young people. We can unite people who already have those resources.
A rancher may have land.
An outdoorsman may have knowledge.
A company may have equipment.
A restaurant may provide meals.
A donor may provide funding.
A mentor may provide time.
A youth organization may know the child who needs the opportunity.
Outdoor Hope brings the community together.
At the center
The Young Person
- Host Ranches
- Mentors
- Youth Organizations
- Volunteers
- Businesses
- Conservation Partners
- Donors
- Veterans & First Responders
- Outdoor Professionals
- Community Leaders
Founding Partners Campaign
Help Us Build It From Day One.
Most organizations invite people to support something after it has already been built.
We're inviting Tennessee to help build this one.
Our first goals — not yet accomplishments
Host Ranches
Goal
Founding Volunteers
Goal
Business Partners
Goal
Leadership & Advisory Members
Goal
Founding Donors
Individuals and families who choose to invest before the first weekend ever happens.
Safeguarding
Safety Is Part of the Mission.
Nothing matters more than the safety and wellbeing of participating young people.
As the organization forms, Tennessee Outdoor Hope Foundation intends to develop comprehensive safeguarding practices in coordination with partner agencies, legal counsel, and youth-protection professionals before programs begin.
For Those Who Served
There Is a Place Here for Veterans and Service Members
Tennessee Outdoor Hope is rooted in serving youth — and that same calling extends to the men and women who wore the uniform. A future program is in development to welcome those who served from across the country to find connection, purpose, and community in the outdoors.
Maybe that's you
Maybe You Have What This Mission Needs.
Whatever you have to offer, there may be a place for you here. Help us build Outdoor Hope across Tennessee.
Land.
Time.
Experience.
Leadership.
Equipment.
Resources.
Connections.
A willingness to show up.
One Opportunity Can Change the Direction of a Young Life.
Let's create more of them.