Kids heading off for two-week-long summer camp with the San Francisco-based Seven
Tepees Youth Program pack some familiar gear: a flashlight, a sleeping bag, a backpack.
But equally important for these adventurers is the baggage they leave behind. Seven
Tepees' participants are at-risk, inner-city youth, aged 11 to 16, for whom domestic
violence, poverty, drug or alcohol abuse, and delinquency are everyday issues, and the
joys of camping, hiking, and nature discovery seem as remote as a distant planet.
Funded in part by the Youth in Wilderness Project (a joint effort of the Sierra Club
and The Sierra Club Foundation), Seven Tepees introduces youth to outdoor activities that
most Sierra Club families take for granted--and consider essential to their understanding
of the world. But it's not simply a matter of dropping kids off at a trailhead with a few
granola bars and a full water bottle. These students are under assault in their daily
lives, so the Seven Tepees program hopes to help them for five years, offering field trips
and natural-resources education workshops after school and on weekends, an annual
excursion in Yosemite, and camp each summer. (Few of these kids have ever been out of the
city, much less to wilderness.) Helping them make that long-term commitment despite
overwhelming odds requires adult mentors, volunteer tutors in the schools, and the
involvement of parents and other family members at every juncture.
So it's no surprise that summer camp, held at Hidden Villa Camp (another Youth in
Wilderness grant recipient) in bucolic Los Altos Hills south of San Francisco, is not your
normal two weeks in the woods. When I arrive, the kids have just completed their daily
hour-long group "reflection," this one on race relations. According to the
multicolored activities calendar posted in the center of camp, other workshops during
their stay will cover gender conflicts and the prison-industrial complex. That's in
addition to lighter introductions to solar cooking, wool spinning, and cheese making, as
well as the usual nature hikes, barbecues, and daily swims in the camp pool.
The success of Seven Tepees' intensity can be measured: Of the 18 original participants
in the four-year-old program, just three have dropped out, and only because their families
moved out of the area. Or you can just talk to the kids. There's the affable 16-year-old
who eagerly thrusts out his hand in greeting and tells me he hopes to be a camp counselor
one day. You'd never guess that he comes from a broken home beset by mental illness and
had, until recently, been struggling in school. Seven Tepees' director Tim Daniels tells
me of a young man who had recently watched his mother shoot his abusive stepfather dead in
the living room--but after summer camp was raving about the sunsets he saw from atop
nearby Black Mountain during a three-day backpacking trip. These kids may not all grow up
to be park rangers, but they've been introduced to a refreshingly new world, and that
perspective may help them survive the urban wilds.
Seven Tepees is one of about 150 outdoor-learning and wilderness programs for
disadvantaged youth aided this year by grants from the Club's Youth in Wilderness Project,
which also works to strengthen California state support of outdoor environmental
education. (A year old, Youth in Wilderness is currently limited to Northern California,
but hopes to fund projects in other states within a few years.)
For more information, call
the Youth in Wilderness Project at (415) 977-5589, e-mail youth-in-wilderness@sierraclub.org,
or go to the program's Web page at www.sierraclub.org/youthinwilderness/.
To find out more about Seven Tepees, contact Seven Tepees Youth Program, 1333 Balboa St.
#3, San Francisco, CA 94118; (415) 752-8733; e-mail info@7Tepees.org.
