Personal achievement through trail stewardship is one component to AMC’s Youth Opportunities Program (YOP). Working collaboratively with AMC’s Trails Department, the program assists organizations with community service projects by providing the tools, training, and expertise. YOP staffers occasionally lead urban youths on camping and canoeing excursions, but their main goal is to give youth workers the know-how to lead trips on their own. YOP provides training, free equipment loans, and trip planning support to more than 200 youth organizations across the Northeast to enable them to independently take their urban youth on outdoor adventures. For many teens, this is their first taste of outdoor recreation beyond schoolyard recess and walks in the park.
“We provide an opportunity for youth to get out of their community and see a bigger part of the world,” says YOP Director Stefanie Brochu. “And for other teens [who do trail work and other local projects], it’s a chance for them to participate
in their community in a whole new way.”
The program’s reach keeps extending. Funding partly stems from the Abbot and Dorothy H. Stevens Foundation, which has helped AMC serve more than 1,400 disadvantaged youths in Lowell and Lawrence, Mass., over the past three years. Collaborating with AMC, the Coleman Outdoor Co. also provides the financial support to train youths on trail maintenance.
One of those young people is 19-year-old Luke Berube, who joined YouthBuild in October 2007. He’s built houses in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina through YouthBuild and says his days of cutting class and drug use now seem like distant memories. He gently places large rocks on the trail to serve as stepping-stones for hikers.
“I’m just trying to be better at life itself,” Berube says as he meticulously places the final stone in the ground. With a day’s worth of work behind them, the group celebrates by eating outdoors.
BRANCHING OUT
Whenever the Groundwork Lawrence Green Team gets together, expect to be entertained. The group’s personalities vary, but their passion for greening their community couldn’t be any more similar. And they always get the job done with a lot of laughs—and a little attitude.
“I have friends that know not to litter around me or I will beat them to shreds,” jokes Jesenia Lopez, the self-proclaimed fashionista of the group.
By establishing community-based partnerships, Groundwork Lawrence aims to spur environmental change. The nonprofit’s premise is that a neighborhood’s environmental conditions are linked to its social and economic health. Facilitating physical activity by developing parks, trails, and recreation areas is one of its primary goals. Enter the organization’s Green Team, a paid 10-member crew from Lawrence that is required to work 20 hours a month while attending high school and 20 hours a week during summer. The team has made a section of trail in Den Rock Park, a 120-acre wooded preserve located in Lawrence, its own. Occasionally each year, hikers find the crew cutting back brush with assistance from AMC.
However, trail work—or any outdoor activity, for that matter—wasn’t always the teens’ forte. AMC-assisted trips have prompted the group to leave the city’s confines, if only for a long weekend. “When we go places, it’s like a culture shock for us,” says 17-year-old Wanny Munoz. “Our families aren’t the type to go camping. I don’t think I know anyone else other than the people in this organization that have climbed a mountain.”
Tidying up the trails in Lawrence, Mass. Photo by Tracy Powell.
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