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Program Summary
Sam Vanderbeek Camp Director, Silver Falls State Park September 30, 2015
Starting August 3rd and lasting until the 28th, Silver Falls State Park was the site of the Silver Falls Youth Leadership Camp. With 4 councilors per week and one temp in uniform there were 47 students served in 4 one week camps. The goals of this camp were to provide pre-‐employment transition services (PETS), job skills, and leadership skills training to special needs youth from all over the state. The first of its kind, this program offers a gateway for the participants, ages ranging from 16 to 21, to demonstrate their abilities in a neutral environment. The information gathered by the councilors provided their vocational rehab councilors and transition specialists with feedback on how to encourage their students into more fulfilling and appropriate careers. The work consisted of invasive species identification and eradication, painting of historic
structures and railings along high use areas in the park, and trail reconstruction.
Partnerships
Beginning with Mike Johnson at the University of Oregon and the Oregon Youth Transition Program, he reached out to the Office of Oregon Vocational Rehabilitation, the Heart of Oregon Corps, the Oregon State Parks, The Boy Scouts of America Explorer post, and the Friends of Silver Falls, each playing a fundamental role in carrying out the program.
The Office of Oregon Vocational Rehabilitation provided the majority of the funding for the camp. They are currently seeking better ways to provide PETS and job readiness assessments, and this program was created to enable just that.
The Oregon Youth Transition Program (OYTP) is a part of the University of Oregon’s Special Education Department and works in conjunction with the office of Vocational Rehabilitation, focusing specifically on transition aged youth, or 16 to 21 years old. OYTP operates in almost every school district in the state and has transition specialists that work within those communities. They are tasked with helping youth into stable employment and providing job coaching if needed. OYTP provided the participants and several transition specialists worked as councilors for the program, we made an effort to make sure that they did not work during weeks with students from their own districts.
Oregon State Parks provided my position as a temp plus a month before the camp began, so that I might become aquatinted with the park, staff, and culture. Also to be trained on all the equipment we might need, make a survey of possible jobs we could do, and where we could provide the most value for our work. OPRD also provided the Howard Creek Horse Camp Concession Area as a group camp for us, as well as two outhouses and two sanitation stations. All the tools used for our work were provided by OPRD as well.
The Heart of Oregon Corps, a central Oregon based non-‐profit that employs and enables high risk youth in environmental restoration, and skilled labor and construction jobs came on as a
partner to organize our pay roll, to process W-‐4’s and I-‐9’s, and provided insurance for our working day. They also provided a number of high visibility vests and organized the purchase of all the camping gear, tents, sleeping bags, pads, etc. All the participants were payed for their labor. For most of them this was their first time camping, and the first time being paid for labor.
The Boy Scouts of America Explorer Post allowed us to be insured for the overnight portions of the event, all our councilors went through the Explorer councilor training program. For this we needed the Friends of Silver Falls to charter the post in the park.
The Experience
This program set out to provide objective job skill assessments, on the job training, pre-‐employment transition services (PETS), build constructive peer to peer and employee to employer relationships, expose youth to State Parks, to promote public interaction, and most of all to foster stewardship of public resources.
In order to establish some sort of baseline, we observed the students setting up their tents and camp after arrival. We then provided an example of how to build a shelter with a tarpaulin, tent stakes, and some paracord. Breaking everyone into groups we could then evaluate them on all the PETS skills i.e. ability to plan and organize tasks, giving and receiving criticism, productivity and so on. As the week progressed we would take two or three topics in the morning and discuss them before work, and then again at the end of the day. By the close of the week every participant could not only describe all the PETS concepts that vocational rehab required, but could relate them to their experience.
We observed many amazing things from each week, but most impactful for me was the way in which all the participants came together as a family, and in the first day or two. Each week offered new challenges in terms of adapting our work schedule to include everyone, because each group offered such wide ranging ability levels, both mentally and physically. The more able youth would, totally un-‐prompted, help those with greater disabilities, include everyone in games at camp, and work with and encourage each other all day. It was the ability to be inclusive that was truly amazing, not common amongst their peers outside of special education classrooms, a lesson for us all really.
The Future
We have the funding, the population, the gear, and the model. What needs to happen moving forward, is to get more parks involved and hire and train more councilors and more Parks staff. The merits of this program are being proved every day, not just in the leadership skills and confidence gained by our participants, some of whom have spoken to their school boards on our behalf (un-‐prompted), or started clubs in their schools, but also in the acre of scotch broom eradicated, the miles of trail restored, and the gallons and gallons of paint on rails and structures. All of this engenders a sense of ownership, and they will return with their friends and families again and again to show off the work and the park they are now so proud of.