Over the past two summers, The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) has received a total of nearly $9,000 from Island Women, Inc., a group of savvy, talented and passionate women who live in nearby Pleasure Island, N.C. Island Women is a not-for-profit organization that’s on a mission to enhance the quality of life on Pleasure Island, which is located just five minutes south of NCOAE’s headquarters facilities in Wilmington.

The generous donation (totaling $8,874) was designated by the local group to be used in NCOAE’s not-for-profit subsidiary, Education Without Walls — an outdoor- and adventure-based program that provides academic and life skill guidance for high school kids living at or below the Federal Poverty Level. The end goal of our program is to motivate and support low-income students in identifying and achieving their potential.

Among many other commitments, Island Women promotes education, cultural expression, and mentoring among women. In our case, Island Women’s members were interested in our Education Without Walls program after NCOAE Co-Founder Celine Adair was invited to address the organization in the summer of 2016.

Celine described how the majority of

If you follow us on Facebook, you may have read about a Community Outreach grant we recently received from the Vertex Railcar Corporation — a startup that’s focused on building the next generation of safe rail tank cars. Vertex and The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education’s (NCOAE) are neighbors here in Wilmington, N.C. When Vertex learned about the work we do through our Educational Without Walls (EWW) program (namely, offering young people living at or below the poverty line the opportunity to participate in structured monthly outdoor adventures and expeditions), they were intrigued.

After meeting with our executive team in person here at NCOAE headquarters and asking how they could help, we received a $15,000 grant from Vertex to further expand the EWW offering between now and the end of 2015.

While we were blow away by Vertex’s support of our local youth, what happened next impressed us even more.

Vertex Outreach Services strongly support the efforts and work of the organizations it supports, including NCOAE. While they’re among the first to stand up and applaud the outstanding services we provide to our local youth, they’re also the type of corporation that walks its talk.

See the people in the image above? Those are just some of the Vertex Railcar Corp employees who generously volunteered their time earlier this month to help us with a little sprucing-up project that we hosted here at NCOAE World Headquarters in Wilmington. All on their own, Vertex Outreach Services asked how else, aside from funding scholarships to send students on EWW courses, they could

It probably goes without saying that most of us here at the National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) are big fans — and loyal customers — of our local Whole Foods Market.

Since we put such an emphasis on doing good things for our bodies, it only makes sense that we purchase those items we put in our bodies from markets that sell only healthy, organic and fresh fare.

So when the good folks at our local Whole Foods Market in Wilmington, N.C., said they wanted to help us raise money for NCOAE’s Education Without Walls program, we just shook our heads and asked, “Where do we sign up?”

What that means is this: You do your grocery shopping at the Wilmington Whole Foods Market on March 23, 2016 — also known as Community Giving Day and 5% Day — and 5 percent of Whole Foods’ net sales on that day are donated to the Education Without Walls program, allowing us to continue our important work of educating local youth through unique wilderness-based experiences just miles from home.

Taking a step back for a moment, what we do here at NCOAE is plan, facilitate and guide teen and adult adventurers all around the globe. Locally, we offer youngsters in grades 7-9 and 10-12 the opportunity to

In ecology, “sustainability” refers to one’s capacity to endure. It’s how biological systems remain diverse and productive for very long periods of time. The notion of sustainability applies also to not-for-profit organizations, and in our case here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), to our ability to attract and retain support that allows us to offer scholarships to youth interested in participating in our programs.

With that as a backdrop for today’s blog post, we’re pleased to announce that Vertex Railcar and Vertex Outreach Services has again decided to provide $15,000 in funding for Education Without Walls (EWW) — NCOAE’s scholarship supported adventure program for local youth whose family income often falls below the Federal poverty level.

Thank you Vertex!

Vertex’s donation, which is the second we’ve received over the last year, will allow us to