New Design High School Hiking Club

The New Design High School Hiking Club enables teenagers from New York City to engage in wilderness activities like hiking and canoeing
while building leadership and outdoor skills. As a teacher at New Design, I created the Hiking Club last year because, having grown up in New York City myself, my experiences in the wilderness with the Appalachian Mountain Club were very important to me.  As a teen volunteer, I helped maintain trails and came to realize how freeing it was to get muddy.  It felt empowering to use tools like axes and pick mattocks to build bog bridges.  I wanted my students to have similar freeing and empowering experiences in the wilderness.  Over the past year and a half I have watched students grow from the challenges of hiking, canoeing and camping.  I see them naturally take on leadership roles and encourage and support each other, physically and emotionally. And, most importantly, I see other, more mature and more liberated sides of students when they are outdoors where they can leave the social and academic pressures of school and city behind.

New Design is a "Title I" public school, which means that the majority of our students receive free lunch and are from families who struggle financially. In addition, at this time, the school is not able to finance trips for the Hiking Club.  While the New Design Hiking Club is able to borrow equipment through the Appalachian Mountain Club's amazing Youth Opportunities Program, the cost of transportation, food and other supplies, including first aid, is prohibitive.  Students provide their own lunch for day hikes and have paid for their transportation thus far, but there are still students that have been unable to attend trips because of high cost.  Over the past year and a half I have subsidized the transportation cost out of pocket, but am no longer able to subsidize costs and want to make sure that the club is sustainable and can continue for many years.  That is why I have begun this campaign on GoFundMe.

We are fundraising for the cost of transportation, food, and supplies for at least 8 trips a year, including 2 overnight trips, for at least 10 students per trip.

Please be a part of the future of the New Design High School Hiking Club and help us attain our goal!

Thank you so much!

--Katherine McMillan and the NDHS Hiking Club