The Mission of BCM is to provide urban teenage youth in need of positive adult mentoring with challenging and safe wilderness experiences led by qualified adult guides.

Description:
BCM combines many of the elements of a mentoring program with an outdoor wilderness expedition designed specifically for under-resourced urban youth. The BCM program is a weeklong trip; the center of which is a five-day wilderness backpacking trip during which 5 teens are matched with 5 adult mentors or a weeklong canoeing experience which matches 4 adults and 4 youth. A BCM experience combines the innate teaching ability of the natural world, with caring adults, to provide a potentially life-changing experience for teens that may not otherwise have had access to either. By providing outdoor team mentoring experiences in partnership with existing youth development organizations, our program has been shown to positively impact the development of personal, social and community values in the teens we serve. Perhaps more than anything, BCM trips provide teens with opportunities to achieve success by drawing on resources they might never have known they had.

History:
Big City Mountaineers was founded in 1989 by James (Jim) A. Kern. Jim came from a background of extensive outdoor experience, as well as success in founding nonprofit organizations.

In 1989 Jim saw an ad in his local newspaper that read “Buy one [airline] ticket and get a child’s ticket for $1”. He invited his youngest son, another adult, and a young man from a low-income neighborhood in Miami to share a backpacking adventure in Montana. The trip was such a success that the idea of BCM was born.

Contact people:

Brie Brower, Volunteer Manager, (phone), (email) Patrice Wakeley, Program Manager, (phone)

Address:

176 Juana Ave, 2nd Floor San Leandro, CA 94577 (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.bigcitymountaineers.org