WITH SKY GRAY
***image1*** The Santa Fe Mountain Center, which provides outdoor experiential education to at-risk populations, started in 1979. How did you all end up where you are since then?
SG:
It's been a definite evolution. When we started with the founder and first executive director, Rocky Kimball, all the Mountain Center did was backcountry wilderness experience programs. For about 10 years that's all the Mountain Center did and then it started to diversify with the advent of ropes courses. It's gone through an evolution of diversifying, looking at different populations, trying to keep an eye on, 'What are the pressing social issues that we can look at, analyze and respond to?'
As the current executive director, what's a typical day like for you? Do you get to be outside all the time?
Well, being the executive director of a non-profit means you have to wear lots of different hats and have a variety of skill sets. In the last couple months we've had a really concerted legislative effort to bring in capital outlay dollars so I had to learn how to lobby and go and ask for large amounts of money.
What's more frightening: the challenge course or dealing with the New Mexico State Legislature?
Ah, that's a good question. It was interesting because I learned a huge amount in terms of the political process, what goes on in the House and the Senate-what you can actually observe and see-and then what goes on in the hallways and the difference between the two.
Is it more of a struggle to get state funding for GLBT youth programs because it's a touchy issue?
It hasn't been. When they were reviewing the service definition manual for CYFD and we came to them and said, 'We really think you need to add this to the list [of risk factors]'-you know the list is, comes from an abusive family, has drug and alcohol issues, there's like 10 or 12 different criteria-they added it. We've have had absolutely no problem whatsoever.
Struggling with sexuality is often a contributing factor in suicide among young people. What does it look like to bring someone into your program who is struggling with those issues?
Well, we do two day-long conferences a year, a make-up of the different GSAs [Gay Straight Alliances]. And sometimes those kids will come and it will be really apparent that somebody is struggling, and if they are, then we try to hook them up to resources to try to get them the help they need. The last one that they did we had somebody here talking about suicide and doing a whole workshop on it. And so now that we have the GSA network we have somebody who's fulltime, whose job it is to focus only on that. So if we get a phone call and a kid needs help, we're there. And we do what we can do and then we can pull in these other folks to basically wrap around that kid to make sure that young person is safe.
How does doing a ropes course empower at-risk youth?
I think that first and foremost the modality and methodology that we use is an engaging approach to young people and adults. By virtue of what we do we're able to access parts of people. It's not like sitting down and saying, 'Let's talk about your problems, let's talk about what happened in your past.' It's an engaging process whereby the group and individuals have to work together in order to accomplish, problem-solve, communicate. So through the modality of the engagement process and us looking at it from a perspective of, 'We believe in what you can do, not what you can't do,' we look at potential and not pathology. It's an approach that really connects, particularly with young people, because it's not as threatening as a psychotherapy office can be.
Is there something about the group aspect of it that makes it particularly helpful?
Yeah, because what we try to do with all the programs that we deliver is create community and a lot of the young people and adults alike have not had a sense of community. So by building the group, and building the capacity within the group to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B in a problem-solving activity, it creates a synergy and engagement that sometimes is not always there. The group process is really important, because they're hearing other people's stories and through that process we build enough trust so they can start to share their own story.
What happens when you have a group of kids who, say, have been incarcerated, and they're here for a day or a week, and then they have to go back out into the world?
We are a therapeutic service provider and we work with other entities like the New Mexico Boys School or the New Mexico Girls School or public schools, or Santa Fe Recovery Center. And their staff come with them. So their staff helps us process. Whatever's going on back at the cottage or back at the residential center, they come here and we know what the issues are and what they're dealing with, so we create the program plan to address those issues. So we work hand-in-hand with agency staff to make sure what goes on here gets integrated, and it's not just a field trip or a day out, that it's really an integral part of their personal growth process.
Working with so many at-risk populations, is there ever a time when you think, 'God, there's just too much.' A time when it just gets to you?
I think it gets to me when we lose somebody. And we've definitely lost people. That gets really hard. We had a drug court program that had a young woman in it and, for some reason, she wasn't showing up and finally her JPPO [Juvenile Probation and Parole Officer] called her, finally got in touch with her mother after about two weeks of trying, and her mom said, 'The reason she's not there is because she's dead.' That makes it tough. It's hard, it's sad, but it makes us all-because we have an incredibly passionate staff-say: 'We gotta do more.' There is hope, so that's what we're trying to instill.
