UNDER ONE SKY VILLAGE FOUNDATION

Description

What We Do: U1S provides camps, one-on-one mentoring, and wrap-around supportive services for youth in foster care throughout WNC.

"Under One Sky Camp is the only place where I can be myself and not fear judgment by other kids and adults for being in foster care." - 12 year-old participant

U1S has three umbrella programs: Camp (we host a mixture of weekend-long overnight camps and day camps through the months of April-December); Mentorship (every youth enrolled in Journey & Jr. camps is paired with a rigorously vetted and trauma-trained mentor who sees the youth twice monthly outside of camp; mentoring is also offered to non-camp youth in foster care at the request of their social worker or guardian); and Passages (focused on helping older teens aging out of the foster system build life skills like budgeting, building good credit, healthy cooking and lifestyle, education and scholarship planning, career goal setting, creating a safe living environment, feeling ownership of their life as they move toward adulthood, and much more.) At the start of each program year, the youth, social workers, and U1S staff create goals for each youth and progress is tracked after each interaction. Many youth request to return year after year.