Creating Authentic Community; The Real Impact of CAT

During this Giving Season, we’ve shared some of the impact of our?Core Programming?and our?Adventure Communities. I hope you’ve gotten a sense of the possibility we try to offer for every participant to stay involved with CAT as much as they’d like. We’re especially proud of the community we develop along the way - a remarkably diverse community that brings people together to have each others’ backs across so many lines that usually divide us, and across which a lot of adults in our country can’t even talk to each other. I want to tell you one of the ways it all comes full circle.?

Over half of our full time staff are folks who started with CAT as participants in?Core Programming, who stayed involved through our?Adventure Communities. These folks are incredible human beings, who I’m so lucky to have on staff. They bring much more to the table than I can tell you here. One of the things they bring is an energy and creativity that completely outstrips mine. Their vision for CAT has gone well beyond what mine ever was, or will ever be. It’s disconcerting and humbling - and something for which I am so grateful. Because the vision, energy, and creativity they bring to this organization and to the Outdoor Industry is stunning. I truly believe it can be - and will be, with your help - transformational for CAT and for the Midwest Outdoor Community.

So I want to tell you some of what they’ve done.

After School Programming: This particular group of staff?created our Community Festivals, are the energy behind our Family Adventures, and have taken the lead in our After School programming. Unexpectedly, After School is the most challenging of all of our programming to do well. We bring outdoor adventures to school grounds or inside a school, shorten them to an hour, and deliver them with a large group of young children. We try to make sure we’re maintaining safety, managing the group efficiently, making sure students are learning something about nature or an outdoor sport, learning something new about themselves, and developing a capacity for self awareness and reflection. It’s a big ask, and we don’t always hit every piece in every program. When it all comes together, it’s pretty amazing.

Here’s how a couple staff described a recent After School program.

We decided to do a climbing series that included learning about gear, knots, and belaying. To put it all together we wanted the kids to end with a climb. With the limitation of having to climb on school grounds in a classroom, we came up with a method that would make it happen without breaking anything or any person.?We used sleeping bags as the rock face and repositioned them in some places to simulate a rough terrain. We taped print outs of hands and feet to various sections of the sleeping bags to simulate routes. We added an extra challenge by adding colored dots to the hands and feet.?The kids who wanted to choose a certain route had a chance to do that by “climbing” a certain color. (In climbing gyms, people climb “routes.” The routes are rated with particular difficulty levels. They are built with one color for each route.)?With the sleeping bag wall complete and the kids having learned the basics of belaying, we had teams of 3 do the activity. We had one person as the belayer, one person as the climber, and one as the anchor - yes, their job was to hold the carabiner that the rope went through. When the “anchor” lost focus they realized just how important they are because if the anchor fails the whole group falls and has to start all over again (side note: if we expand on the climbing mini series we hope to add a simplified/child friendly anchor building part so it can all come together). It all worked out and most of the group had the chance to rotate through all three positions. With only two staff, it was a lot to manage but we made it work and it was totally worth it.?

I got to work our After School programming last year, which was CAT's first year of providing this type of programming.On the last day of program, a 5th grader asked me, “So we won’t see you again?” It was heart-breaking. (She’s in programming again this year, so staff still get to see her. She’s old enough this year that she gets to be a cheerleader at the school too - she seems really excited and proud about that.) And - I had this idea that perhaps, in 10 years, she would have stayed in After School until she aged out, started helping us at After School as a Youth Leader, joined our Adventure Communities, and started working with us; and that the staff member who was there at the school with me that day, who started in Core Programming in 2010, would be the Executive Director of the organization; and I would be simply an advisor as needed, because the organization had been handed to these talented, dedicated folks with this incredible creativity and vision.?

The real impact of CAT is in the ways we offer more than any one type of programming. It’s in the community we create. It’s in the offer to stay involved. It’s in the creation of young leaders?who change the organization and will change the City. It’s in these pieces, around and beyond the individual program areas, where CAT meets our twin goals of personal growth and healing, and of building equity and representation for marginalized communities in Chicago’s green and blue spaces. It’s in these twin goals where there’s promise that goes so far beyond the outdoor world; it’s where we?build a City that’s safe, and where we?build young leaders who will create a future full of more promise than you or I can even imagine. If we provide safety and opportunity, if we offer authentic diverse community and real leadership, their energy and creativity and?vision for the City and for the world will far outstrip ours.