Last updated: February 9, 2022
Article
Teens To Trails: A Gift to Maine's Youth
By Laura Watt
When Carol Leone first talked with Julie Isbill, National Park Service – Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance program project manager, about her idea to help high school students across Maine get outdoors more, Isbill realized that what Leone was asking for did not check the expected boxes on her agency’s application for assistance. After all, Leone was not asking for help to build a trail or restore a river – she simply wanted to see more youth enjoying the rivers and trails that were already there. However, Isbill noticed how Leone’s proposal reflected critical goals of both her program and the entire National Park Service, and so a project was born.
“This is an unconventional project for us,” Isbill said. “We’re used to working on projects with more tangible results, making specific on-the-ground changes. So this was unusual.”
Teens To Trails is a nonprofit organization in Maine dedicated to helping high school students have access to outdoor experiences. The story begins in 1988, when Carol and Bob Leone moved to Maine to raise their family in a place where people love being in nature. They wanted to enjoy backpacking, camping and paddling -- and to share their new state’s natural beauty with their two daughters, Lindsay and Sara.
After they tragically lost 15-year-old Sara in a car accident in 2005, the Leone’s sought to redirect their grief. The family founded Teens To Trails to share the kinds of outdoor experiences that Sara had once enjoyed with other young people her age.
“We wanted to pick one thing we could do to make a difference,” Carol said. “We moved to Maine thinking ‘everybody’s outside, exploring all the different parts of Maine!’ [But then] I realized there were a lot of young people who didn’t get outside because their family didn’t do that. It was quite an eye-opener for me: not just that somebody didn’t have cross-country skis, but that the outdoors was not really part of their life.”
The Leone’s were inspired by the effectiveness of the Wiscasset Outing Club, which Sara and her friends had been a part of. “I saw, as a parent, all the positive things they were getting out of the outing club,” Carol said. Thus Teens To Trails acquired its core mission of developing high school-based outing clubs. These clubs provide students of all backgrounds and levels of outdoor experience safe access to healthy activities in the spirit of adventure and camaraderie. Teens To Trails would not try to create new programs from scratch, but instead to support and grow similar efforts already taking place.
After the Leone’s got in touch with Isbill, who has experience working with community-driven projects and nonprofit organizations, she helped them form partnerships with entities that care about getting youth outdoors.
“She gave us confidence that this was something we could and would pursue,” Carol said.
Supporters such as L.L. Bean were soon giving Teens To Trails a lot of feedback. Isbill explained that the organization needed an executive director, an office and more diversity in skills. With guidance from the National Park Service, board members took the feedback and made the necessary changes to strengthen their organization.
Carol became the part-time executive director of the organization, and began applying for and receiving grants. “Julie [Isbill] guided us to that money we would never have known about; that was huge,” Carol said. “She would also give advice on writing grants. And how to fund an organization; who we might look to.” With advice from Isbill, the organization launched its first signature fundraising event, “Bow Ties and Bean Boots.”
"Sara would never have envisioned this. She was pretty humble… she just loved life and she loved being outside. It was just in her. She would love that there are more people outside.” – Carol Leone
Additionally, the organization founded a scholarship and organized a festival to raise awareness of their mission. Sara’s Scholarship sends two high school sophomores to summer camp annually. Life Happens Outside Festival is an annual celebration of Maine’s outdoors to inspire active lifestyles for families and youth. Teens To Trails is also continuously drawing more youth outdoors by supporting teachers, volunteers and partners who run things locally – helping to increase the number of high school outing clubs.
“At the end of this, we don’t have a trail, a tangible thing. But we are using their [the National Park Service’s] expertise and their energy. We’re so thankful,” Carol said.
With increasing activity and success, Teens To Trails has picked up momentum, and in 2018 the board approached the National Park Service to formally apply for assistance again. This time, the organization asked Isbill to help take them in a new direction, looking far beyond Maine. The new project is called “Growing the Teen Outdoor Movement.”
“It’s an exciting new dimension,” said Lia Morris, Teens To Trails new full-time executive director. “Carol was very diligently tracking all the requests we were getting from out of state, ‘how do you set this up, how are you getting funding,’ understanding our model and taking it back to their home states. She and Julie [Isbill] had been toying with this idea to again apply for National Park Service assistance to really dig into how T3 [Teens To Trails] could scale the program outside the state.”
Morris said that by the end of September, the Isbill’s research should indicate where the “hot spots” might be. That is, which states might be ripe for creating outing clubs in high schools.
“Here we are, a small organization in Maine trying to provide technical assistance to outing clubs,” Morris said. “How do we bring that culture to the high school space, largely a public school system that doesn’t have the budgetary bandwidth or human capital? We can bring some financial resources to the table.”
Teens To Trails provides direct financial assistance to outing clubs through grants – advancing the core mission to get teenagers outside for unstructured play, unstructured fun, and to enhance their physical and mental well-being.
“We envision a day where every high school in Maine has an outing club and the financial and human capital to sustain the clubs over time,” Morris told the Bow Ties and Bean Boots audience in May. “If we can reach all Maine high schools we can reach all Maine teens, from all socio-economic backgrounds. Our vision is that teens from the suburbs of Portland to the distant reaches of our rural counties can have the same opportunities to visit our parks, float on our rivers and slide on our snow. This vision will lead to happier and healthier teenagers, who are more resilient and carry with them the skills to navigate down all of life's trails.”
Last fall, after more than a dozen years at Teens To Trails, Carol determined that it was time for her to step aside, but remain an a volunteer. Though one Leone has reduced her own role, another has stepped up – Sara’s sister Lindsay, now a lawyer and with a child of her own, has moved back to Maine and joined the board of Teens To Trails.
“Sara would never have envisioned this,” Carol said. “She was pretty humble… she just loved life and she loved being outside. It was just in her. She would love that there are more people outside.”