New Springfield College Partnership with Berkshire Outdoor Center ...

It is a region plagued with 80% unemployment and the Sioux YMCA
is one of only a few agencies working to provide free services to the
community with no membership revenue and a budget pieced together
with limited fund-raising. For newly minted Executive Director Carol
Mann, it is a mission she has believed in and advocated on behalf of for
over thirty years.
“This is the Lakota people’s land and their heritage that they are tied to
and they can’t see living anywhere else,” says Carol of the 8,000 people
the Sioux YMCA serves, and those who live on the reservation live over
50 miles from the nearest grocery store and another 100 miles from any
other conveniences.
Since 1991, Becket-Chimney Corners YMCA’s
Travel and Service Program REACH has had an
integral role with the Sioux YMCA, bringing 20
to 30 teens annually to spend two weeks helping
the Sioux YMCA with several service projects
including basic deferred maintenance tasks, trail
maintenance and working with children at the
summer day camp.
“We want the REACH participants to understand
that the YMCA is more than a place to work
out, but a place that provides food, day care
services and life skills. REACH participants are
seeing how communities function and survive
in extreme poverty,” says Carol, who sees the
experience as a huge educational benefit for
campers who have never been exposed to such
a rural, remote and poor environment.
For the Sioux YMCA, volunteers and
donations from across the country,
particularly from other YMCAs like Becket-
Chimney Corners YMCA, are relied upon heavily and their outreach
and impact all depends on how much they can raise annually.
“The staff at the Sioux YMCA work with the communities on the
Cheyenne River Reservation year-round, and are critical to helping our
REACH groups connect with families and youth for service and cultural
opportunities,” says Jim Brown, COO and Travel and Service Program
Director.
Outside of service work, REACH campers will be traveling to three
Indian communities, Bridger and Iron Lightning, and Dupree to spend a
week at each site to complete service work. Following their two weeks of
volunteering, REACH will travel for an additional two weeks seeing such
sites as Crazy Horse Memorial, Mt. Rushmore, Wounded Knee, Devil’s
Tower and Custer State Park and the Badlands.
BCCYMCA News Issue 09 July 2012
Sioux YMCA an Important Partner to
Enriching REACH Campers’ Service Work
Every summer, REACH campers travel to the poorest region in the United States
of America to serve children from the Cheyenne River Reservation or, as the
Lakota Indians call it, “the good river.”
4
Carol Mann, Executive Director,
Sioux YMCA
Buffalo graze behind th 2011 REACH participants.
“ The primary goal of the REACH
Program is to enable teens to
develop leadership skills through
a service-oriented experience”