Backcountry Camping for NYC Youth

Have your experiences in the outdoors transformed you? What have you learned as you walked a forest path, climbed a mountain peak or gazed at the stars far from the city lights?

Help our students from East Side Community High School experience the transformative beauty of the outdoors. From May 9th to May 12th, our entire school will experience a "Week Without Walls" where their learning will take place outside of the classroom. The 20 students on this trip chose 3 days of backcountry hiking and camping along 16 scenic miles along the AppalachianTrail.

The students are eager to learn how to use a camping stove to cook their own food, pitch a tent, read trail maps, and carry all their gear and supplies on their backs over mountains and streams.

As a Title 1 school, our students come from low-income families. To make this trip possible for them, we need to raise funds for gear rental, transportation, and purchasing food. Our estimated budget is $5,000. The students are fundraising $1,500 on their own; we need to raise the additional $3,500 from this site.

The mountains have called our students. Please help cultivate the next generation of stewards of our natural spaces. Please help cultivate the curiosity, resiliance and determination our young people as they explore the wilderness!