Reintroducing Voyageur Trail Mail

Greetings VOBS Friends,

August has been an exciting month here at Voyageur Outward Bound School. It has been a month of overcoming challenges and realizing significant successes. Next week, after a long hiatus, we will return to in-person programming with wilderness expeditions in the Boundary Waters. Starting in October, we will pilot virtual VOBS programs with our Twin Cities school partners. Today, we reintroduce our monthly newsletter, Voyageur Trail Mail. Trail Mail signals a return to sharing all the updates that are fit to print about VOBS. I hope you enjoy getting reacquainted with our monthly communication; please look for Trail Mail in your inbox the first Wednesday of each month.

In our first response to the COVID-19 crisis, I let our community know that VOBS would face the future with calm, confidence and compassion. Since the earliest days of the pandemic, our team acted on this motto. We face tough decisions with calm, confidence and compassion, and one of our toughest decisions was to suspend summer programming.

Once that decision was made, the real work began. We knew that our students would need Outward Bound more than ever. We began evaluating and exploring the possibility of resuming programming in the fall. Thanks to our team's calm, confident and compassionate work, we are ready to welcome students back to Homeplace next week.

Since June, with the help of expert staff, as well as regional and national Safety Committee members, we have been working tirelessly to adapt our courses for local, state and national guidelines related to the pandemic and to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. We are humble, yet bold as we pursue our mission to change lives through challenge and discovery, and we are very excited to welcome our staff back to base and serve students for the first time since March.

We believe that everyone is needed, especially in times like these. We will be calm, confident and compassionate -- for our students, their families, our partners, supporters, staff and community. We believe that more compassionate and resilient people create a more compassionate and resilient world. We are Outward Bound.

Yours in adventure,

Expeditionary Courses

In-person expeditionary programming resumes on September 8, 2020. We are offering Classic, Intercept, Semester, Pathfinder and Outdoor Educator expeditions. As we have all learned over the course of the past five months, the severity of the COVID-19 outbreaks varies greatly by location. Each Outward Bound School made decisions regarding fall programming based on many factors, including the status of COVID-19 in their region as well as their ability to secure resources to resume operations. We are excited to resume these in-person programs for those students who are ready to get back outdoors with Outward Bound.

Virtual VOBS

We are also excited to pilot brand new 'virtual VOBS' programming with five key Twin Cities school partners this fall. While the pandemic and school safety policies currently prevent us from working in-person, we are committed to preparing students to thrive. We will launch distant but synchronous bi-weekly Outward Bound curriculum with 120 youth in October and November. The focus will be on community and team-building to help students discover belonging, strength and purpose during this time of unprecedented challenge. Please join us in thanking the Twin Cities Center team for their innovation and hard work. We wish them great success in this new adventure!