True to its name, AMC's Youth Opportunities Program (YOP) continues to create new services, activities, and initiatives—new opportunities—to help growing numbers of urban kids get outside and enjoy the outdoors.

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Details on YOP leadership training and services can be found at outdoors.org/yop.

YOP reached more than 16,000 urban youth throughout our region in 2010, a record-setting number that contributed to the 100,000 youth served since the program's inception in 1968. Recent successes—particularly in New York and New Jersey—are attributed largely to partnerships with local agencies and organizations, always integral to the YOP model, according to YOP Director Stefanie Brochu.

In 2001, YOP served 642 youth in the New York City area. Jump ahead 10 years to 2010, when AMC established a New York City office and focused more heavily on local outreach, and that number had climbed to 3,139. With the new office and the work of YOP New York/New Jersey Coordinator Sebastien Venuat, more than 300 additional youth were reached in just one year's time.

Brochu says that recent increase is thanks to a partnership with STRIVE (Support and Training Results in Valuable Employees) International, which has helped Venuat accomplish "an extraordinary level of outreach." Venuat works with YOP clients in metropolitan New York and New Jersey, as well as at AMC's Mohican Outdoor Center in Blairstown, N.J., which he visits weekly.

Other partnerships have blossomed in New Haven, Conn., Boston, and the surrounding cities of Framingham, Lawrence, and Lowell, where approximately 2,000 youth per year are reached via the YOP Summit Sites initiative. "Through Summit Sites, we've done some very targeted outreach in communities that are underserved and provided an increased level of programming support," says Brochu, noting that AMC YOP staff work with staff at youth agencies to provide training and build an outdoor youth leadership program. "Our Summit Sites are really designed to help them do more than they could on their own," she says. Funders include the Charles Hayden Foundation, the Rowland Foundation, the Abbot and Dorothy H. Stevens Foundation, and the Theodore Edson Parker Foundation.

Another unique YOP effort is the Youth Mountain Adventure Program (YMAP), a partnership with donor and fundraiser John Gould, which provides direct leadership of trips by YOP staff in such locales as the White Mountains and AMC’s Cardigan Reservation.

YMAP is an example of how YOP has also sharpened its focus on outdoor trips for youth groups that are co-led by YOP staff and youth workers. These trips demonstrate best practices and help youth workers gain confidence. In addition they are free or low-cost, allowing youth workers to offer their kids more robust trips than they could offer on their own.

AMC is also making Ponkapoag Camp outside Boston available to YOP groups, and has added canoes, campsites, a gear shed, and a shade shelter for outdoor programming.

Brochu notes that loaning outdoor gear and equipment is one of YOP's most important services, and at least 20 groups can now be outfitted at one time, a four-fold increase in capacity in the past decade.

Some items are purchased, while others are donated by such supporters as REI and The Coleman Company.

Over the past decade, at a time when state budgets and youth agency budgets have been slashed, Brochu notes, "YOP continued to grow and serve more youth." She says providing ways to help youth workers get their kids outdoors for free or at very low cost "kept many [youth agency] programs afloat in difficult times."