After a years worth of regular monthly visits to Sacramento Pipeworks, Options For Youth, a program for at-risk youth saw some amazing results. Says Brad Astin, Outdoor Experience Supervisor: "After crunching some numbers following our Winter Graduation, we found that the Outdoor Experience Program had a 95% retention rate among students and graduated 5 of its participants already. The retention rate means that of the 20 "at-risk" students who participated in the program, only 1 had dropped out of school as of 12/18/09. That number is far superior to our overall population and speaks volumes to the value of the experiences our students had in the program. We are very excited to get it going again!"
Congratulations, Brad. We at Pipeworks are looking forward to again playing a small part in the success of all the students in the Outdoor Experience program!

Labels: Brad Astin, Options for Youth, Outdoor experience program

Sacramento Pipeworks in a joint effort with a community group that we service, Options For Youth, is sponsoring a food drive this holiday season. The drive will assist The Sacramento Food Bank in gathering food to be distributed to those in need around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Statistics show that 50 million people, including 1 in 4 children, struggled to get enough to eat last year. Please bring your non-perishable items to the gym and leave them in the bin near the front door. Thanks in advance for your help with this very worthy cause!

Labels: Options for Youth, Sacramento Food Bank, Sacramento Pipeworks

Sacramento Pipeworks recently hosted a community group, Options for Youth, at our gym and we were fortunate enough to hear back from them with a photo and a testimonial.

The students came and had a day of climbing at Pipeworks and the day was such a success that it looks like they signed up for one day a month of climbing excursions. Check out the letter we received from Brad Astin, the Master Teacher at Options for Youth:

"I wanted to thank you for having our students come climb at Pipeworks. We had class with the students yesterday and they were very excited about the last climbing trip and pumped to hear that we expanded the dates to one per month for future climbing outings. They are already talking about how they are going to climb harder routes! Going into the first climbing outing many of the students were unsure of themselves and how they would perform on the wall. Now all they are much more confident and looking forward to the next challenge. This confidence is carrying over into the classroom as well. These students are more outspoken and participate more in class discussions than they had before. We have also seen increased teamwork and academic performance from these students as well. They know that climbing and participating in the Outdoor Experience program is a privilege and they are taking the responsibility very seriously. Thank you very much for your involvement with our students and our program. We look forward to a continued relationship with Pipeworks."

We were happy to have you and look forward to seeing you again in the future!

Labels: climbing, community, Community Group, Groups, Options for Youth, Sacramento Pipeworks