Leap Movie Rough Cut from Salt Communications on Vimeo.

For this year’s Programs, LEAP asked participants and staff from our partner organizations to complete a survey before and after each trip and received a one-month post-trip follow-up phone call by a neutral party to gather open feedback.  The surveys asked six questions with rated numerical answers between 1 and 6 (six being the most favorable) and three written open questions. The survey was a self-assessment measuring quality-of-life, health, and LEAP program performance.

This year’s LEAP Program for New Avenues For Youth showed an overall improvement of 8% in areas pertaining to sleep assessment, as well as a 6% improvement in respondents’ affirming ‘life is good’ and a comparable improvement in respondents’ finding affirming finding beauty in the world.

As for the Oregon Burn Center (OBC), the results of the pre-program/post-program survey show that, of the six questions with numerical answers we saw an overall improvement of 7% from the pre-trip survey to the post-trip survey.  The one question addressing a self-assessment of general health was the highest at 8%.  Among the Burn Center staff, we saw an overall 8% improvement with the highest at 36% addressing sleep assessment.  Pre and post program self-assessments measuring quality-of-life, health, and LEAP program performance, which were developed in conjunction with the Oregon Burn Center, showed an overall improvement of 7% across categories.

With Friends Of The Children, we saw an overall improvement of 6%, with a 13% improvement in respondents’ positive outlook on their lives and a 12% improvement in respondents’ affirming finding beauty in the world.

Equally, if not more, compelling are some of the responses yielded from the free form testimonials submitted by the participants themselves. Speaking to what they had learned from and what proved meaningful in their experience on the LEAP program, participants from the Oregon Burn Center write:

“I am stronger than I thought; this trip has expanded my reality.”

“It is ok to be myself even though this isn’t the body I would choose to be in.”

“Others on this trip are non-judgmental and I learned something from everyone.”

“I learned something from the river; go with the flow.  I can’t paddle upstream but I’ve learned to work with the current and use it to my advantage to get where I want to go.  I’ve learned to appreciate and work with what I have.”

“I can do things I never thought I could.  Kayaking through class 3s, facing fears and trusting those around me to help when I needed it the most.”

“I was reminded of how much I am capable of not giving up when things are hard.”

“The flow of the river is like the flow of time.  There are some rough and scary times but tomorrow is another chance to do something great.”

“Joy that the others genuinely felt from being part of the experience, I got chills and found myself holding back emotion when participants explained how excited they were to receive their confirmation letters and express their personal growth they experienced on the trip.’

“The interaction and sharing with survivors in a neutral setting, the great outdoors.  The challenge of healing combined with the challenge of doing something new and unusual, kayaking the Rogue.”

“Being outdoors with this group was a lot of fun.  We laughed a lot and joked around with each other.  There was comfort in this group and high spirit.  There was a special bond being in this group of OBC survivors.  You never know the power of being on the river; it made a huge mark on each one of us.”

We also asked participants from NAFY to write about what they had learned and what was meaningful in their experience with LEAP. One participant’s testimonial spoke to “facing fears and pushing (paddling) through them,” going on to write that over the next three months, “I hope to continuously face my fear with a sense of perseverance.” Another participant’s said that the program taught them to “always be happy” and that they hope over the next three months to “get my life straighten[ed] out [and] finally get back on my feet.” To the more specific prompt of what they had taken away from the program, this year’s NAFY participants write, “I learned that I can accomplish anything”; “the fact that I challenged myself while soul searching…I learned a lot more about myself”;  “That I am amazing…an awesome, amazing, talented, strong, confident woman–not a girl–but a woman,” that “life is worth enjoying and that help is only a hand gesture away”; “to be willing to give trust,” and; “to finish what I started…to get through obstacles”

Fall Into LEAP Teaser

WATCH THE  Leap Teaser on Vimeo.

At the conclusion of the 2011 LEAP Program for New Avenues For Youth (NAFY), a bus left Southern Oregon headed for NAFY’s headquarters in Portland, OR. The participants riding home were a snapshot of those NAFY serves, homeless and at-risk youth. When the bus arrived, some of them would go home to beds, and some would have no homes to go to. Such are the everyday facts and reality for youth, in-and-out of homelessness. It is easy to lose faith, if I dwell long on such images and their implications.

But then my mind’s eye recalls the NAFY participants as I had seen them, recalls what I saw in them, in the final canyon on the program’s final day. What I saw in them I had seen in NAFY participants from before. On this year’s LEAP Program for New Avenues For Youth, the participants and staff from NAFY (most of whom have little to no rafting or whitewater experience) faced the most challenging day of whitewater possible on the Lower Rogue River—a twenty-mile day, with more than 18 rapids, including two class IVs. By midday, they grew tired. But they didn’t complain and they didn’t give up; they pushed through. They looked out for one another, encouraged each other. It was as though they had all independently found in themselves a courage and confidence too much to not spread around.

Hope lives in what I saw in all of them—what one could not avoid seeing. I saw in them mettle and will as turbulent true and strong as deep currents. I saw steel replace flint in eyes gone wide. I watched them in the rapids, as they were changed in-and-by them. They began to read the water; to see in it the myriad choices, currents and consequences; to acknowledge fear while not allowing that it control them; to make decisions rather than allow the river to make their choices in their stead. I saw also as they committed to their choices, to finding their line through the waves, and to holding it despite the waves. They took control and they followed through—and when they failed, they got back in their boats and kept on paddling.

They saw it, too, this strength—in each other and in themselves. At night in the canyon they spoke about it, and about what it meant to them going forward.  We all knew intuitively, it seems, that many of them would take what they’d found on the river with them off it. Therein lies my faith.

-Aaron Lieberman, LEAP Program Guide & Volunteer Staffer

The sun had already begun swinging its downward arc by the time it became clear that the beach where we’d planned on camping had already been claimed. It meant that the group would have to run the next canyon, Snowhole Canyon, the most challenging section on the river. Entering the canyon, the sky grayed. It started to rain. The group was tired. In Snowhole Canyon, the rapids come in quicker succession and become consecutively more challenging the further along you go. But despite all of this, perhaps for it, the group pulled together, pooled positive energy, and smiled with their heads held high to meet the driving rain.

Halfway through the canyon we pulled off on the side of the river for a break. It felt cold and wet there without movement to keep us warm, and I worried for morale. But as we pulled into the current in the still-light Idaho evening in the canyon, a brilliant ray of sun broke through the clouds. Some in the group began to sing, and then there was laughter echoing clear and bright through the high canyon walls. Not a one person complained as we finished paddling the final five miles of the day into camp.

The day elicited an evident empowering effect on the young group from Friends Of The Children that carried over to the whole of the program. Over the remainder of the program participants came closer together, supporting one another both with encouraging shouts and helping hands. At camp, whatever cliques there had been among participants at the program’s outset diffused. Participants vied for whatever work there was to do. They helped with meals, taking turns cooking (some of them for the first time), and sang with one another and the LEAP guides while doing dishes by headlamp under the brilliant starry Idaho nights. In discussion groups, they spoke about the founding of new friendships, of feeling supported, and of finding a strength and confidence in themselves that they intended to carry over into their everyday lives, to wield against whatever challenges they might face. There were tears, but still more laughter.

-Aaron Lieberman, LEAP Program Guide & Volunteer Staffer