For the past three years, Coyote Trails has provided challenging and thoughtful experiences for the participants in our program, the Hispanic Academic Outreach (HAO). HAO is an afterschool program for migrant high school students. Camping, hiking, and outdoors activities in general are new experiences for them, and for many, the camping weekends were the first time that they had spent a night away from home.
Coyote Trails provides well planned, structured activities that are geared to each group of campers. In our case, the staff of Coyote Trails was exceptionally sensitive to the cultural differences and limited outdoor experiences of the HAO participants. Coyote Trails made sure that one of the staff people was completely bilingual, that the food reflected the Mexican heritage of our students, and that students felt comfortable responding in either English or Spanish. But most important, they focused on our students as individuals, and were very tuned into the fact that being so far from the city was a very new, and sometimes scary experience for some of them.
In addition to the challenging and thought-provoking activities, the Coyote Trails weekends were fun. There was a lot of laughter as well as moments of reflection. With each experience, our students increased their understanding of themselves, their relationship with Nature, and their place in the larger world.
We are looking forward to more Coyote Trails experiences.
Linda Ohmans
Project Manager
Hispanic Academic Outreach