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Meet Siani
November 11, 2013

Go, Siani, Go!  We cheered from the shoreline of the river's regatta course. We were watching the Frostbite Regatta,

the last regional rowing competition of the season with races for collegiate athletes and high schoolers.  We were all there, her mom and dad, our staff, and volunteers from the Urban BoatWorks boat shop. Siani was rowing in the girls’ 2000-meter high school eights event as a member of the Cooper River Club Rowing Team. 

Siani is a freshman at the UrbanPromise Academy and has participated in our BoatWorks program since she was a sixth grader at our middle school.  By eighth grade she was part of the advanced build, crafting cedar strip canoes and kayaks for use in the UrbanTrekkers paddling program.  Being on the water, paddling small boats and rowing, has become a familiar place for Siani, a place where she is a leader.

Watching her and her teammates propel their long sleek sculls through the water, pulling their oars together in cadence, I felt a special joy realizing that the vision of BoatWorks has become a reality.  Siani embraced the river and developed a discipline and work ethic to realize a vision for her own life.  Her days are long, school and practice till 6:00 PM everyday, with the exception of Thursday afternoons, when she’s in the boat shop where she first developed her sense of belonging in the world of paddling.

Siani isn't simply wishing for a bright future of college and career, she has chosen and pursues that future.  Someone asked me a few years ago, "Why do you build boats with urban youth?"  Here's my answer. Meet Siani.

Keep on Trekking,

Jim Cummings

Making Connections
October 29, 2013

A few weeks ago, the 10th grade class at UrbanPromise Academy travelled to Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland. Every year around this time, the sophomore class can be found playing football on the beach, digging for sand crabs, paddling the bay behind Assateague Island, and camping on the beach. The trip is a 

favorite of mine; I grew up camping with my family at Assateague and hold the place close to my heart. Students each year are awed by the beauty of the sunrise over the Atlantic and the clarity of the night sky.

One activity that we often do with the students is to walk the Life of Dunes trail, a path in the national park that takes you through the dune ecosystem to the forest and explains how barrier islands function to protect the mainland. It’s the best lesson in ecosystem adaptations you could ever ask for, as students can see right in front of them the differences between a plant that grows on the dunes versus in the woods or how a dune could come to be formed there.

On this particular trip, we had several students along who participated in our Colorado and Utah expedition over the summer. Those students visited Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, which has a very different ecological and geological history than the sand dunes at Assateague. And as we were reading signs on Assateague about how the dunes come to stand and stay standing there, Tabitha, who went to the Great Sand Dunes, spoke up with a question. She said, “So wait. How are these dunes different than the ones I hiked all the way up in Colorado?” We went on to explain the differences in their formation and function and Tabitha can now tell you the difference between those two sets of dunes.

For me, when Tabitha asked that question in her typical sassy and curious fashion, her travels and adventures with UrbanTrekkers came full circle. Tabitha is a student that takes every opportunity she can get to travel with UrbanTrekkers and as a result has been to and seen more places than the vast majority of students her age. Because of her willingness to jump in headfirst to whatever Trekkers has to offer, she is able to compare and contrast ecosystems from firsthand experience, rather than just from pictures in her science textbook. And for a student like Tabitha, who shows a refreshing curiosity that is often lost in teenagers, learning and making connections like that on a beach will keep her engaged and eager to learn. That’s the beauty of UrbanTrekkers.

A "Peace" of UrbanTrekkers Honduras
October 9, 2013

 

It’s here! UrbanTrekkers Honduras has officially launched! Though still in the beginning stages, I was amazed at the responses and involvement from the youth and volunteers living in Copán Ruinas to the newest program offered by UrbanPromise Honduras.

Founded in 2004 by Jim Cummings in Camden, NJ, the mission of UrbanTrekkers is to be an outdoor, hands-on, up-close learning and mentoring program, where the world is our classroom. UrbanTrekkers has now expanded to several UrbanPromise sites around the world, including our very own Copán Ruinas!

Looking back at the month of September, I’m blown away that we packed as much as we did into a single month. A weekend retreat in Siguatepeque, our first annual Trek for Peace, a volunteer opportunity with a macaw release program, and a local 8 mile (13 km) hike! Though there’s so much to share, I’ll start with what I would say was our greatest event of the month.

What does peace mean to you? That was the question that each of the thirty five youth who participated in the “Trek for Peace” asked of community members during our 5K walk through town. Our “Trek for Peace” was held on September 21st, in honor of International Day of Peace, sanctioned by the United Nations in the 1980s. 35 youth and 12 adult volunteers walked approximately five kilometers through the streets of Copán while engaging in discussions on the meaning and significance of peace, completing teambuilding and leadership initiatives, serving those in the community, building relationships with other youth, and learning what local organizations are already doing to help bring peace to others.

We heard from representatives of the Red Cross to learn about local volunteer opportunities, learned about the Hebrew greeting, “Shalom,” which when translated, means “Peace,” visited a local café which also works with local schools to raise awareness of reforestation projects, filled several bags of trash from the streets along the way, and did our best to plant seeds of peace along the streets of Copán in whatever way we could. One girl was so inspired after our talk of “Shalom,” that she reached in her pocket and handed a homeless man the cash she had on her. Several boys grabbed the extra bags of water we had with our group and started handing them out to people who looked thirsty in the park.

The day ended in a cookout and with the challenge to look for opportunities to bring peace to their community. What stands out to me most from this day was not the distance we walked, the activities we completed, or even the fact that 35 youth listened and understood all my instructions in Spanish, but the fact that so many youth and adult mentors showed up to be part of this experience. We had teenagers from UPH, the Red Cross Youth Association, Mayatan (the local private bilingual school), and the public school systems. Our volunteers showed up from UPH, Mayatan, the Red Cross, Heart to Honduras, and local businesses. That to me is a testament to society’s longing for peace. The Trek for Peace was a chance to unite those in the community in an endeavor to bring lasting peace between nations, communities, family, God and man.

So what is peace? Well according to those who walked the streets of Copan on September 21st, peace is far more than just a nice word or slogan. Peace is wholeness. It’s a lack of fighting and war, but also it is replaced by a fullness. “Shalom Shalom,” or “Perfect Peace,” is something God offers us through His Son. Perfect peace means all our relationships- with God and with man- are complete; there’s nothing lacking. This is the peace we hope to see in Copán someday. And slowly but surely, Shalom is coming to the lives of the youth, children, and families living in this city. 

Lessons from the Land
August 27, 2013

It's late August, the "dog days" of summer, and I'm already feeling the changing seasons, subtle changes on the landscape.It has been an amazing summer for the UrbanTrekkers, full of summer paddling trips on our local rivers and in the coastal bay; trekking over 2,000 miles through five national parks in the Rocky Mountains and high desserts of Colorado and Utah; traveling to mid-coast Maine for kayaking and hiking, swimming and diving at the old rock quarry; and going out on lobster boat to bring in our dinner. It’s been full and rich…relationships have grown and students have been transformed.

We wrote hundreds of words in our journals and took thousands on photos. When posted on Facebook, these photos received hundreds of likes, shares, and comments. I love and appreciate the technology of Facebook that allows us to reach thousands of people with pictures and stories of our adventures. The day we return home from a trip, the pictures go up and the responses start to follow; they are kudos for a trip well done and an experience shared.

However, once these experiences are shared, the excitement post-trip is fleeting. Facebook doesn't stop to allow us to reflect, instead it moves on quickly to the next posting. After a day or two the experience is quickly buried and forgotten. This saddens me. I'm not ready to move on, I don't want my Trekkers to move on yet, I want more time for the experience to marinate and to be savored. We need to reflect more; we need more time to appreciate the exhilarating feelings that go along with a grand experience. I want my Trekkers to reflect on these experiences for more time to recall what they felt as they hiked the Great Sand Dunes, explored the Canyonlands, or kayaked the rocky shores and islands of coastal Maine.   

These expeditions are where the best lessons are learned. It’s where we are tested and the real self is revealed. They are lessons from the land, ancient voices from the past that leave lasting messages on the landscape for us to decipher, but only if we stop, listen, and reflect. I’m not ready to move on so quickly…I’m going to give this summer more time to simmer for both me and my students.

Keep on trekking,

Jim 

The Art of the Road Trip: Chapter 2
August 19, 2013

If you hang around the UrbanPromise community for any length of time, chances are at some point you will have the opportunity to meet Adrian, a recent graduate of the UrbanPromise Academy and one of our most avid Trekkers. And my guess is if you speak with Adrian, you will come away from the conversation impressed and humbled by his candor, his faith, and his ability to articulate how UrbanPromise has changed his life.

However, if you continue your relationship with Adrian, you will begin to see not only his past struggles and current successes, but also the trauma in his life that continues to affect him every single day. He will tell you how hard it is to simply remember to do his homework once he walks out the doors of UrbanPromise and is faced once again with the norms of his life in Camden.

Recently, I had the privilege of bringing Adrian on our first ever two-week UrbanTrekkers expedition to Colorado and Utah. On this trip, we talked regularly about metaphors that we drew from the landscapes around us as we travelled through high mountain peaks in the Rockies to the harsh and beautiful deserts of red rock and sand in Utah. One of the metaphors that Jim pointed out our Trekkers was that of the delicate balance of life in the desert and the flowers that survive there. He asked students, “How is it that in an environment like this, with hardly any water, blazing sun, and no soil, such a flower was able to grow?” The Trekkers talked about the flower’s adaptations to its environment, its hardiness, and its ability to cling to the minutest amounts of resources that it needed to thrive.  We all agreed that while flowers are beautiful no matter the setting, there was something uniquely precious about noticing the beauty of a flower in the desert.

Around the campfire one night, we asked students to journal about the “lessons from the land” we had learned. When it was Adrian’s turn to share, he stood up slowly, intentionally. He spoke to his fellow Trekkers about the imbalance in his life between who he can be on Trekker trips and who he is drawn to be by his environment in Camden. He told us, “I come on Trekker trips to be who I truly am, who God made me to be.”

Whether Adrian sees it or not, he is the desert flower. He fights to thrive in the harsh environment in which he exists in the city of Camden. He struggles to withstand the blazing sun and lack of soil in his surroundings that would sooner destroy his life than give it to him. He clings with all his might to the resources that UrbanPromise gives him. He recognizes the value of the friendship and guidance of mentors who love him, and he takes every opportunity to travel with UrbanTrekkers and see the world beyond the walls of his day-to-day existence. As Adrian continues through life, I promise you, if he uses these resources effectively he will thrive inspite of the environment into which he was born. And as he does, something will make you stop and notice him the way you might a flower in the desert. There will be something uniquely sacred there to see.

Keep on trekking,

Julia

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