Education Updates:

Youth Education Program awarded $19,000 grant for Youth In Wilderness from the Sierra Club

Youth from northwest Denver rarely have the chance to hike a mountain path, explore a canyon, or even smell a Ponderosa Pine tree. Although they live a mere twenty miles from the foothills, these students have no access to the open spaces that CMC members revere.

Transportation, equipment, outdoor skills, time, and role models are limiting factors for the majority of urban youth.

All of that is changing for students who are interested in a new after-school and weekend adventure project with the CMC Youth Education Program. Thanks to funding from Youth in Wilderness, a joint project of the Sierra Club and the Sierra Club Foundation, students at Baker, Skinner, and Horace Mann Middle Schools in Northwest Denver will have an opportunity to learn outdoor and leadership skills and to experience the mountains first hand. This new project will build on the Youth Education Program, which is currently bringing mountain-related topics into the school-day curriculum. More than $19,000 in funding will provide transportation, some staffing, and supplies for mountain field trips. The students’ families will also be encouraged to participate.

Donate your extra gear to a great cause

The Youth in Wilderness project needs all sizes of rain gear, warm jackets, gloves, hats, and daypacks. Your extra gear (that is clean and in good condition) will help provide a positive mountain experience for youth and will build on a donation received from REI in support of this project. We need all sizes.

From bears and berries, to trees, and coyotes

The next generation of mountaineers is learning environmental education at the American Mountaineering Center in Golden. Stacey Norman, CMC Education Coordinator, is using her practice with her own two young children to develop creative programming for two- to five-year-olds.