A $15,000 grant from the National Park Foundation will enable urban and rural youth to visit Yellowstone National Park under a program offered through the Yellowstone Park Foundation.
The "America's Best Idea Grant" program is designed to connect diverse, underserved and under-engaged populations throughout the United States with the national parks in innovative and meaningful ways.
The Yellowstone Park Foundation will use its grant to support Park Journeys, a program that brings underserved urban and rural youth to Yellowstone for a five-day experience that inspires stewardship, leadership and academic potential.
Last year’s pilot program brought 10 urban teens from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Yellowstone. This year the program is expanding, and three groups of teens from Cincinnati, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Brockway, Pennsylvania, will visit Yellowstone.
Park Journeys is a collaboration among the Yellowstone Park Foundation, the Yellowstone Association, and Manchester Bidwell Corporation’s National Center for Arts and Technology (Pittsburgh), which has inspired affiliated centers of learning, arts, and community development in Cincinnati, OH and Brockway, PA.
“We are so pleased that the America’s Best Idea grant will allow Park Journeys to expand on last year’s success, and give more youth the opportunity to experience Yellowstone, one of the world’s finest outdoor classrooms, for the first time,” said Karen Bates Kress, the Foundation's president.
Comments
Oh, now that's a wonderful idea. Everyone isn't as lucky as I was, spending most of my childhood summers visiting almost every national park west of the Rockies (and a couple east of them).