News

Bears, moose and chest-deep mud: homeless Wilmington teens venture to Alaska

Port City Daily

August 2017

A group of people backpacking up a mountain in Alaska.

WILMINGTON — Nine Wilmington-area teens from chronically homeless families just spent three weeks calling Alaska home.

The trip was organized by the National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), a Wilmington-based non-profit in the same vein of NOLS or Outward Bound. Largely funded by a $25,000 Challenge Cost Share Program Grant from the National Park Service, the trip combined service work and outdoor adventures.

For most of the participants, ranging in age from 14-18, it was their first time on an airplane, but none of them were strangers to the great outdoors. All nine have been involved with the NCOAE’s Education Without Walls (EWW) program for years.