CorpsTHAT’s mission is to connect the Deaf Community and the outdoors through education, recreation and careers.
CorpsTHAT was founded by Sachiko Flores and Emma Bixler who are dedicated to the conservation corps experience and expanding the horizons of the Deaf, Hard of Hearing and American Sign Language Community in the outdoors. Sachiko and Emma met while working for the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa’s Summer Youth Program in 2011. They both continued to explore their interests nationally and internationally in facilitating experiential learning opportunities for youth and young adults. After working for multiple conservation corps, they saw the need within those programs for more support to understand the complexity of social inclusion in the outdoors. This lead to the founding of CorpsTHAT in the fall of 2016.