By J.A. Jones, Contributor
TAMPA BAY — Lightning Community Hero award-winner and Tampa native Jovan McNeill started the nonprofit Cloud Nine Outdoors out of his own personal experience.
Urban Futures Festival sponsors Gathering of Women Food Pantry Food Supply Drive
The founder and executive director recalls how spending time in nature while fishing with his teenage mother as a child transformed his world.
“I grew in admiration of the outdoors and realized how powerful it is for teaching confidence, resilience, and life skills. I started Cloud Nine Outdoors to share that with youth and families, especially those with limited access to outdoor education.”
Urban Futures Festival sponsors Gathering of Women Food Pantry Food Supply Drive
Standout experiences for Jovan include seeing kids catch their first fish, or “parents telling me their child came home more confident and focused; those moments show me the work is making a lasting impact.”
Now, McNeill brings his love of the outdoors and his expertise as a dedicated fireman and first responder to the wider community. He will be offering an “Urban Prepping 101” Family Resiliency workshop during the Tampa Bay Futures Festival on Saturday, November 1, at the Union Academy Family Center in Tarpon Springs at 401 E Martin Luther King Jr Dr, Tarpon Springs, FL 34689.
Organized by Pinellas Diaspora Arts Project, the Urban Futures Festival is a month-long exploration of
how organizations and individuals are responding to current and future challenges in Tampa Bay Neighborhoods. “As the global population living in urban areas is set to rise from around 56% in 2021 to 68% in 2050, sustainable transformation of our cities is a top priority,”(https://impact.economist.com) states the festival’s press release in regards to this global movement.
McNeill noted that urban communities “often lack access to outdoor and preparedness training. My work bridges that gap, giving people real skills while building confidence, mentorship, and connection.”
For Jovan, the opportunity to partner with Pinellas Diaspora Arts Project and TBUFF is a chance to share his passion for “preparation, sustainability, and empowerment, which align perfectly with shaping urban futures. I’m excited to bring hands-on skills and a sense of empowerment to the festival.”
McNeill clarified what the term “prepper” means to him: “A prepper is someone who is thinking ahead of time for situations that might occur. So, that means having extra water, extra food, extra lighting sources. It’s just preparing yourself that you can go about seven days if stuff hits the fan — if you lose all power, electricity.”
Jovan McNeill with Brandon Hagel of Tampa Bay Lighting
Ultimately, said the Lightning Community Hero, the question to ask oneself for their home and family is,
“Can you survive for seven days? And I pretty much prep for that scenario.”
As a first responder, McNeill was involved with the recovery and rescue efforts during the 2024 hurricane season that devastated Tampa Bay. He surmises that only a very small percentage of area residents are prepared for a loss of power for very long.
He shared the challenges experienced during the hurricanes as part of the evacuation team picking up people throughout the county in buses – including having to convince people to leave their homes to go to shelters.
Not only did he experience those who didn’t want to leave, but others who were “trying to bring the whole house with them” – families who, when boarding the buses and arriving at the shelters, finally understood why knowing how to select only necessities – and which necessities – to bring was essential.
“I believe a lot of people are not prepared for that. Those who have been through hurricanes before may know the system of shelters; but it’s still a vast majority who try to take everything, or feel they need all these materialistic things. But in the basic scheme of things, you’re on a bus for maybe an hour to two hours, driving with strangers, and room is very limited.”
McNeill stressed that basic necessities are what people should be focused on bringing. “That includes medications, breathing equipment, oxygen tanks,” he acknowledged. But even with warnings, he said, people are not prepared for the realities of what emergency conditions require.
In regard to how his penchant for prepping relates to his nonprofit work with youth, he acknowledged, “I try not to use the word prepping with the youth, because some people look at preppers like we’re crazy,” he laughed. “The word prepper is kind of like, oh, you have a bunker full of all this food, and you just have the stuff sitting around.”
But he is dedicated to teaching the youth what it means to be able to “feed themselves and survive off the land. So. like fishing — we’re surrounded by water, it’s a very easy way to provide food, and be able to eat it, camping in the woods, cooking over an open fire, not using electricity. A lot of stuff I do, I don’t tell the kids it’s for prepping, but I do use it as life skills — that can be used in case they need them.”
The outdoorsman relayed that many of us don’t prepare because people “never think it will happen to them. And I think the last hurricane really surprised a lot of people in the Bay Area. It really surprised people when they had to go back to the house and had no electricity. I think some people went a week without power.”
Unfortunately, this means people will not prepare, he added, until it “actually hits you in the face.”
Urban Futures Festival sponsors Gathering of Women Food Pantry Food Supply Drive
He also acknowledged that since our region has not had a direct hit “in forever,” jokes and ruminations of Tampa Bay being protected by Indian burial grounds get passed around, and it leads to “a false sense of security.”
He added that the false sense of security can lead to thing like people forgetting to run their generators between storm seasons a few times a year. “People don’t realize that you have oil or gas sittingyou’re your generator, and you’re supposed to run your generators every three months. It tells you that in the actual manual, to run your generator every three months for an hour to burn off extra fuel!”
But, he added, in a year like this one, with few major storms, people get comfortable again – and will forget to maintain their generator. However, he noted, if two years go by and they haven’t maintained it as directed, “you have a $500 generator sitting there that’s not being used and not been run, that pretty much can be useless by the time you need to use it.”
McNeill is also stepping in to give resiliency workshops this fall at Artz 4 Life Academy during their family engagement workshops, where he will show parents how to make use of items in the emergency kits being supplied through a grant from United Way.
Urban Futures Festival sponsors Gathering of Women Food Pantry Food Supply Drive
As he readies for the Nov 1 event in Tarpon, he notes that the first 35 families signed up for the Urban Futures Festival workshop will get a handy emergency tool, and McNeill is happy to share his expertise with attendees.
“I’m excited for this workshop. I’m going over several different segments on prepping; it’s gonna be very informative. Going over all the things that are important to do, focusing around hurricane prep, because that’s going to be the most common thing to hit us in this area.”
Register for McNeill’s workshop on Nov 1 in Tarpon Springs here: https://tbuffest.com/register-to-attend-events.
Follow McNeill’s work on Instagram: @cloudnineoutdoorsFl
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CloudNineOutdoors/
Website: www.cloudnineoutdoors.org
