Jr. Camp for savvy kids

SAN BERNARDINO -- The caravan of personal cars and federal vehicles rolled into the sleepy neighborhood around 10 a.m.

About a dozen children nervously at the Whitney M. Young Community Center, wide-eyed and clutching knapsacks packed with belongings, eager to embark on what would for most be an unprecedented adventure.

The run-down, bullet-riddled "Project" flats these kids call home, seemingly strung together by the raggedy clotheslines and drab uniformity, shrunk rapidly in the rear-view mirrors and then disappeared completely.

Less than one hour later, the vision was new: Rugged, open wilderness, surpassed in beauty only by its splendor of freshness and freedom.

"I love it out here," said Hakeem Moore, a husky 11-year-old who wants to play pro football and has lived nearly his whole life in the high crime, subsidized housing tract in West San Bernardino known derisively as "The Projects."

Over the next 24-hours, Moore would camp for the first time, see his first gopher snake, see his first bobcat, make new friends and smile, a lot.

He wasn't alone.

Eighteen boys and girls, preteens and teens from two of the city's roughest public housing developments, trekked along with U.S. Forest Service volunteers and a Westside community leader to the Lytle Creek Recreation Area last weekend for the 2nd Annual Jr. Camp Academy.

The program, a creation of longtime West side community stalwart Bobby Vega and U.S. Forest Service Ranger Gabriel Garcia, aims to giving kids living in public housing the rare - and maybe life-changing - opportunity to visit the national forest and to participate in outdoor camping, hiking and environmental education.

"You bring these kids up here, get them away from the neighborhood and just let them be kids," Vega said. "Sometimes that change of scenery is really important ... you just watch their whole way of carrying themselves change."

The program is free to kids and their parents, which is crucial because any cost would probably be prohibitive to their impoverished families, Vega said.

The camp is a text-book exercise in the power of altruistic partnerships, leveraging a slew of small donations of time, money and equipment into an impressive two-day camp.
REI, a Rancho Cucamonga sporting goods store, pitched in by donating tents and other equipment.

The Housing Authority of San Bernardino is a partner, providing thousands in support.

The forest service is a major contributor, not only providing transportation, lands and equipment, but a number of staffers who volunteered their weekends to guide and mentor the kids.

"All kids are at-risk," said Mary Long, a deputy district ranger who helped look after six giggly girls, mostly first-time campers. "And girls are no different, and they need the same opportunities to come out here and interact with nature, get some different perspectives."

Key to the program is not just getting kids out of their grim neighborhoods, Vega said. It's about interacting with adults in uniform, an opportunity they rarely have in their home neighborhoods, where relationships with police and social workers can be strained or even adversarial.

Richard Preston, a Forest Service Firefighter, gave the doe-eyed children a tutorial on fire truck equipment and the harrowing challenge of battling wildland blazes.

"Being in a position to be a role model, it feels really good to bring smiles to these kids' faces," Preston said. "Where they're coming from, they've seen a lot of negativity, I'm glad to show them some positive things."

Vega went a step further, noting that Preston, who is black, was a particularly appropriate role model for the children, all of whom were black or Latino.

"That's cultural competence," Vega said. "To have someone who looks like them, a firefighter in uniform, that sends a powerful message."

The Jr. Camp also has another practical function: To begin steering project housing kids early into positive work and education programs with the Forest Service. Vega and Garcia also work twice monthly with other teens from the same project housing in a Conservation Corps. program in which teens are paid $60 stipends for two weekend days per month working in the forest.

Those who perform well are considered for full-time employment, Garcia said.
"That program, with the older kids, is the real intervention program," Vega said. "This one, getting the younger kids a taste of this, this is the prevention."

As the afternoon wore on Saturday, memorable moments flashed in rapid succession, any of which liable to stick with any of the children for their lifetimes.

Vega stumbled upon a non-poisonous snake, and brought the kids to observe at a safe distance. Squirrels scampered around, awing some of the children.

They played in their tents, clustered around a mighty Maple tree, around midday for no other reason than most had never been in one.

Later, Smokey The Bear delighted the kids with an appearance that none had seen outside of television or photographs.

Later Saturday, the kids enjoyed perhaps their greatest thrill as they watched an adult bobcat traverse a slope, a dead rabbit hanging from its mouth, barely 100 feet from where they were hiking, Garcia said.

Gustavo Ayala, a 16-year-old San Bernardino High School student, was beaming before the sun about an hour before sundown.

"I'm not quite decided on what I want to be when I grow up," he said. "But it's down to police officer or forest ranger."

[tag1]robert.rogers@inlandnewspapers.com
(909) 386-3855