Take A Hike – Youth At Risk Foundation

I love profiling non-profits’ work, and the Take A Hide Foundation for Youth At Risk is one of those whose work I have followed closely but for some reason I never get around writing about them. I had an opportunity to peruse their website recently, and loved their approach.

Take a Hike guides and empowers these youth to blaze a trail, a positive path with positive outcomes. With Take a Hike’s guidance, every youth will have an opportunity to blaze their own trail–one that is right for them, that empowers them, that gives them survival skills for life.

As an academic myself, and one who teaches now university level (though, in case you didn’t know, I also have taught high-school), I am very fond of programs like the Take A Hike. Much like the program I participated in when I was a youngster in Mexico, where I taught adult folks who lived in gang-dominated areas, Take A Hike focuses on at-risk youth (the programme where I taught focused on adults, but I think there is much value on focusing on at-risk youth, at the earlier stages of life development).

Take a Hike youth are in grades 10-12, between 15-18 years old. Participants in Take a Hike struggle with personal issues that inhibit their success in the mainstream school system. Their issues may include drug and alcohol dependencies, legal troubles, and behaviors that often result in suspensions and/or long absences from the school system. Their backgrounds can include addiction, physical and mental abuse, low self-esteem, depression, and/or trauma. Students are typically referred to Take a Hike by school counselors, principals, teachers or social workers for a chance to make lasting change.

Take A Hike Foundation will have an event soon, The Moonlight Snowshoe 2012 at Mount Seymour (one of my favorite mountains) with The Peak (a radio station I love, in Vancouver), on February 23rd. It’s a fundraiser and looks like it’ll be very fun.

A guided moonlit snowshoe trek with great people and delectable treats amongst snow-capped trees. In addition to a $20 registration fee, each registered participant commits to raise over $150 by collecting pledges from colleagues, friends and family.