FOUNDATION
Ethan Braunstein MD, Board Chair, Forest Highlands Foundation
regardless of individual school resources, family income, or supplemental funding, to participate in this experience which helps to make Flagstaff a unique community. Along with helping to fund scholarships to Camp Colton, we anticipate participating in the recently announced capital campaign to upgrade the lodge and kitchen and to improve infrastructure for the entire site. We’ll keep you updated about the progress. The Foundation has also been busy in other ways. The grant review season has just begun, and, under the leadership of Kathy Ha a ke, our grant committee has been divided into 4 teams to review grants submitted in health care, human services, youth, and education respectively. As it is every year, the entire process is organized and administered by the Arizona Community Foundation Flagstaff with our Foundation make its funding decisions in the “Marathon,” a 4 hour meeting after all the applications have been reviewed. We then collaborate with other local foundations at “horse trading.” In this manner, by cooperation with other donors, many of the applicants are fully funded. Interviews with applicants began in the middle of June, so we will keep you informed of the process and its outcome. As always, if you wish to know more about what we’ve discussed here, or if you have any other question or comments that will help the Foundation fulfill its mission, please let me or any other of the board members know.
The Foundation Board recently was privileged to hear a talk by Ari Wilder, the Executive Director of Camp Colton, the facility in Hart Prairie that gives Flagstaff grammar school students an outdoor experience and an opportunity to learn about the geology, biology and ecology of the Flagstaff region. In fact, if you are a Flagstaff native or you are a full time resident with school age children, either you or your children have experienced Camp Colton for yourselves. In its fifty years of existence, more than 45000 Flagstaff school children have participated in Camp Colton’s activities. The heart of the Camp Colton experience is the 6th grade program, in which 6th grade students spend 4 days and 3 nights at the Camp, accompanied by teachers and the Camp Colton staff of environmental educators. There are both formal and informal courses, including local expeditions in nature and the environment for the students. Students sleep in the main lodge or platform tents, and meals are prepared on the wood burning stove in the kitchen of the lodge. There also are social activities, but I’m not sure exactly how the square dancing fits into the STEM curriculum of environmental science. Other Camp Colton programs include day trips for 1st and 2nd graders, for whom outdoor exploration at the Camp is supplemented by in school learning, and a 6 day summer program for 7th and 8th graders who wish to add to their environmental experience with research projects and local hiking and exploration. All students in the Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD) are eligible to attend Camp Colton, and that’s where we come in. Some support is provided by FUSD, and the remainder comes from individual supporters and local charitable foundations such as ours. This enables all Flagstaff elementary school students,
Talk to you next month,
Ethan Braunstein Board Chair, Forest Highlands Foundation
SAVE THE DATE
DENISE MARTINEZ MEMORIAL PRO-AM Monday, August 15
CLICK HERE
Signup for the Tournament and/or Sponsor Today!
VOICE IN THE PINES | JULY 2022 8
Powered by FlippingBook