SOS Outreach currently offers programs across 28 mountain resorts in 6 different states. During the upcoming winter season, SOS will serve 380 participants in Summit County. Summit County will also have over 30 adult mentors, or ‘Sherpas,’ who will lead students through the curriculum; encouraging goal setting, modeling the core values and having fun sliding on the slopes with youth participants!
New this year, SOS is expanded programs in partnership with Vail Resorts to Salt Lake City, Utah. As part of this expansion, at-risk youth in Salt Lake will benefit from the rigorous curriculum to build self-esteem and life skills through leadership workshops, community service projects, core value training, mentorship, and ride days. Participants come from a variety of backgrounds including failing grades, low-income households, and single-parent families. Along with the opportunity to experience mountain adventure sports, SOS programs incorporate positive adult mentors that offer encouragement and act as positive role models for youth.
While the organization is proud of these expansion efforts and curriculum developments, the real excitement is due to the impacts SOS is seeing in participants. One long-term participant explained the positive effect the curriculum has had in her life: “Without SOS and the support that I received, I don’t doubt I would have gone down the wrong path sooner or later. What [SOS gave] me is the path to success and change…Change is your future and the best way to predict your future is to create it.”
All of this positive change is made possible through the support of community members who step up to be mentors and through the generosity of mountain partnerships like Vail Resorts. Executive director Seth Ehrlich explains “without the support we receive from the community and Vail Resorts EpicPromise, Breckenridge, Keystone, Arapahoe Basin, Loveland, and Copper in Summit County as well as all of our mountain partners nationally, this level of impact wouldn’t happen.”
About SOS Outreach
Founded in 1993, SOS Outreach is a national youth development program that introduces underserved youth to adventure sports like skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, mountain biking, and backpacking. Serving over 5,000 youth annually, SOS Outreach promotes long-term success through best-practice and progressive curriculum that focuses on service, goal-setting, life skills workshops, core value development, and positive adult mentorship. To learn more, visit www.sosoutreach.org, or call 970.926.9292.
About Vail Resorts EpicPromise
At Vail Resorts, everything we do is built upon the promise of bringing together the mountains, our communities, employees and guests to ignite a passion for the outdoors, conserve the natural environment and support our local communities for a bright and sustainable future. EpicPromise brings this to life as the umbrella brand for all of the Company’s environmental and community giving efforts. For more information, visit www.epicpromise.com.
Vail Resorts, Inc., through its subsidiaries, is the leading global mountain resort operator. The Company’s subsidiaries operate nine world-class mountain resorts and two urban ski areas, including Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado; Park City in Utah; Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood in the Lake Tahoe area of California and Nevada; Perisher in Australia; Afton Alps in Minnesota and Mt. Brighton in Michigan. The Company owns and/or manages a collection of casually elegant hotels under the RockResorts brand, as well as the Grand Teton Lodge Company in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Vail Resorts Development Company is the real estate planning and development subsidiary of Vail Resorts, Inc. Vail Resorts is a publicly held company traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: MTN). The Vail Resorts company website is www.vailresorts.com and consumer website is www.snow.com.