Submitted by the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office

The state’s recreation and Conservation Office awarded the Lopez Island Family Resource Center a grant of $148,610 to offer its Coast Salish: Sea, Land and Place program to 120 students in grades seven through twelve.

The program offers students peer mentoring in the outdoors in the fall and winter and five day-retreats at Camp Moran and an overnight trip to the outer islands in the spring and early summer. The majority of students participating are low income. Outdoor educators, Washington State Parks interpretative specialists, and tribal teachers co-facilitate each session. The primary goal of this program is to provide students land-based education led by tribal educators as opposed to trying to fit Indigenous knowledge into a classroom. Other programs goals are cohort and leadership skills, academic engagement, self-esteem building, and access to public lands. For more information about the LIFRC’s project, visit https://secure.rco.wa.gov/prism/search/ProjectSnapshot.aspx?ProjectNumber=23-1376.For a complete list of the state’s 2023 ROC grantees, visit https://rco.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/NEWS-275-OLGGrantDescriptions.pdf

The Lopez project is the only San Juan County 2023 ROC grantee.