Celebrating40Years in the Outdoor Classroom - The Chewonki ...

News from the Neck
Baxter State Park Teams Up with Chewonki
For the second year in a row,
Chewonki leaders guided 10 highschool
students on a 9-day
exploration of Baxter State Park.
The Maine Youth Wilderness Leadership
Program was created after a Baxter State
Park study revealed that the majority of park
visitors are older adults. The Friends of
Baxter State Park (FBSP), an independent
citizen group that promotes the values of
wilderness preservation, spearheaded the
program in an effort to boost visits by Maine
youth.
In 2009, FBSP contacted Chewonki
Wilderness Programs director Greg Shute in
search of leadership. “I was excited by their
model,” says Greg. “The backcountry of
Baxter provides an extraordinary landscape
for exploration and learning. I was happy to
support the effort with Chewonki leadership.”
Greg worked with FBSP board
president Barbara Bentley to develop a
program whereby Chewonki annually
provides two trained guides to lead the
group.
This year, Registered Maine Guides and
Chewonki wilderness trip leaders Keith
Crowley and Leah Titcomb led the teenagers
from South Branch Pond down the Pogy
Notch Trail to the summit of Katahdin. Along
the way they met with Maine senior
geologist Bob Johnston, Penobscot cultural
educator Barry Dana, park naturalist and
resource manager Jean Hoekwater, Bangor
Daily News journalist Brad Viles (who later
Chewonki is proud to announce that it
awarded $782,000 in scholarship and
financial aid for campers, trippers, Chewonki
Semester School students, and school
subsidies for the Outdoor Classroom and
Traveling Natural History Programs in fiscal
year 2010 (which ended on August 31). This
amount represents 16.2 percent of
Chewonki’s total tuition revenue for the year.
Chewonki is able to fund financial aid
largely through the generous contributions
of donors, both to our Annual Fund and to
our Capital Campaign, where financial aid
endowment represents the largest of the
five campaign goals.
6 / Chewonki Chronicle
published a feature-length piece in the
paper), and others. These “guest speakers”
met with the group and provided workshops
in everything from natural history to photography,
painting, journaling, canoeing, and
campsite maintenance.
John Fox, a participant from Unity,
Maine, said about the trip, “I can honestly
Chewonki Increases Financial Aid Awarded
The aid is awarded in two ways: needbased
and through a series of partnered
summer scholarship programs. In 2010,
need-based aid totaled $660,000 across all
programs, and scholarship program aid
totaled $122,000. Our largest partnership is
with Summer Search, a national leadership
development program for low-income highschool
students with which Chewonki has
partnered for 19 years. Last summer, 33
Summer Searchers participated in our
extended wilderness trips across Maine.
Chewonki also has scholarship partnerships
with organizations in Russia, Greenland, the
Bahamas, and Maine.
say it was one of the most fun and
memorable weeks of my life!” The program
has received funding from the Quimby
Family Foundation for three years, and there
has been no cost to students. New funding
sources will be needed for 2012. To learn
more about the program or to download an
application, go to www.friendsofbaxter.org.
The semester school awarded $245,000
in need-based financial aid for fiscal year
2010, representing 14.6 percent of gross
tuition. For the current school year, this
figure will increase to more than 17 percent,
mirroring the increase in family need experienced
by independent schools and other
programs across the country.
“Chewonki needs a robust financial aid
program to make our programs affordable
and accessible across the socioeconomic
spectrum,” says president Willard Morgan.
“How we continue to meet this need going
into the future, especially in light of the
current economic climate, is a missioncritical
issue for Chewonki.”
BOB JOHNSTON