Words & Photos Take a Hike
Take a Hike empowers vulnerable youth to change the trajectory of their lives with a full-time mental health and emotional well-being program embedded in an alternate education classroom.
Before Take a Hike, Dillon’s life was unstructured. He wasn’t attending school and was arguing with his family. Dillon started getting into bad habits and hanging out with the wrong crowd. His life was moving in an unhealthy direction. Eventually, he learned about the Take a Hike Program in Saanich through a friend. Intrigued, he asked his mom to sign him up for the program. They met with Take a Hike’s youth and family worker and the teacher in the classroom and he felt comfortable joining the program for his Grade 10 year.
Coming into Take a Hike, Dillon was nervous and took some time to warm up. He struggled with shyness and found his first year in the program nerve-wracking, as he didn’t have a friend group and was nervous about becoming friends with the kids in the program. He still wasn’t coming to school very often, and would disappear from the program altogether from time to time. But eventually, he started to make friends in the program and found confidence. Dillon even started to come to class every day and keep up with his schoolwork – he actually enjoyed coming to school.
Dillon started to thrive in the program and built a trusting relationship with the mental health counsellor who he spoke with often. He started to think about his future – something he never would have done before. Dillon developed a love of the outdoors and found his mental health started to improve. One day, around the campfire during a trip, he looked around at everyone as their faces were lit up by the light of the fire and he realized they were all smiling and laughing. He realized he was smiling too and that he was happy and felt safe. He belonged.
Dillon has since graduated from Take a Hike and is pursuing a trades career. He is looking forward to giving back to his community and engaging more with the outdoors. As Dillon reflected on his time at Take a Hike, he realized, “before coming to Take a Hike, I wouldn’t have bothered to think about the future. Take a Hike has done a lot for me.”
Last year, 89% of Take a Hike youth felt they were able to make gains in their mental health and 86% felt they had developed the skills necessary to be successful in the workplace. These numbers are just a glimpse into the transformational change experienced by vulnerable youth while at Take a Hike.
www.takeahikefoundation.org
