UrbanTrekkers

Sign up for UrbanTREKKER updates and follow along on our expeditions! UrbanTrekkers' expeditions offer hands-on learning and journey-based experiences to around 100 youth each year. Through travel to places beyond their everyday lives, youth are motivated to learn more about themselves and the world around them and develop their potential as young... leaders. Each trip is focused around the six key elements of UrbanTrekkers: outdoor adventure, environmental awareness, historical perspectives, cross-cultural experiences, community service, and leadership training and team-building. In partnership with the Camden Shipyard and Maritime Museum, Urban BoatWorks has been building character in our students one boat at a time. Since the programs beginning in 2009, more than 40 boats have been handcrafted and launched on the water. Through funding from the William Penn Foundation, UrbanPromise hires five to eight students each summer as RiverGuides to lead guided paddling trips on local waterways in the very same boats students build in the Urban BoatWorks boat shop. Paddle trips are open to the community. UrbanTrekkers' experiential learning programs expose inner-city youth to the diversity of people, places, and natural landscapes outside the environment of their everyday lives. Our programming follows the philosophy that education is a lifelong journey that, when nurtured, leads to an endless childlike curiosity and a continual quest to know why. Each Trekker component is designed to complement the academic rigors in place within the UrbanPromise classroom. Through a generous grant from the Wallace Research Foundation, UrbanTrekkers is expanding our experiential and expeditionary programming to other UrbanPromise sites throughout the United States. With resources for staff, training, and travel, we now travel each summer on an expedition to the national parks of Colorado and Utah with students from multiple UrbanPromise cities.Read More