By Justin Andress, The Mountain Times
You’d be hard-pressed to find a local who doesn’t consider AntFarm a community institution. However, few people realize the extent to which this youth-oriented nonprofit has become a force for good in its community. Now, a new grant from the Hood-Willamette Resource Advisory Committee will help AntFarm extend its community-building efforts.
Most people who live on the mountain have some familiarity with AntFarm thanks to the Cafe that sits in the heart of Sandy and serves a delicious assortment of drinks, pastries, and sandwiches. The AntFarm Cafe is just the tip of the iceberg for AntFarm Youth Services, though. It’s easy to spot evidence of its good work throughout Mt. Hood community, whether you’re hiking or riding on one of the trails they’ve cleaned or you happen to be one of the seniors for whom they do chores.
Within and without, however, AntFarm’s highest priority is inspiring the community’s youth to build a brighter world through discipline, hard work, and imagination.
AntFarm’s Director of Workforce Development, Neal Hatley, is the person charged with harnessing these values and using them to prepare kids for future careers. It’s a daunting task, but it’s one that Hatley is clearly passionate about. He’s jovial, informed, and enthusiastic when talking about his work.
“Man, I’m having a ball!” Hatley exclaims over a cup of coffee at AntFarm Cafe.
He’s here to discuss a $50,000 grant bestowed on AntFarm by the Hood-Willamette Resource Advisory Committee. In the last several months, the Hood-Willamette RAC has funded 45 projects that focus on improving roads and water quality, rehabilitating ecosystems, and supporting trail maintenance.
Hatley and his team won their share of the Hood-Willamette RAC’s disbursement with a pitch that was critical to the long-term health of the mountain. The Forest Cleaning Initiative will fund the cleanup and trash removal of illegal dump sites all over the Mt. Hood and Willamette National Forests.
“All we’re trying to do is clean up trash on the mountain, which we all agree is a good idea,” says Hatley. “So, we put together a proposal and said we’d operate a crew a couple of days a week to be on standby and start responding to those calls.”
The organization also has QR codes that mountain explorers can use to pinpoint the location of illegal dump sites so that AntFarm crews can log it and add it to their list. Thanks to this influx of funding, it won’t be long before you see crews hiking into the woods to clean up spots where people have dumped their unwanted garbage.
The National Forests are just the first step in AntFarm’s trash cleanup efforts. “We hope to get funding from the County, private foundations, and even private citizens,” says Hatley. “Then, we can open it up to enough days a week to serve all the locations in the Mt. Hood corridor and ideally the 224 corridor as well.”
There’s an enormous job ahead, but Hatley is firmly focused on the benefits his work delivers both to his community and its kids. “To me,” he says, “The most valuable way to teach a youth [the value of] a work ethic is to show them what their work can do,” says Hatley.
The Workforce Development program is designed to do just that. “It’s a way for [youths] to get a step into their career, get some professional experience, get something to put on a resume, make some money, of course, and then hopefully set themselves up for a career.” If they want to stick around the organization, AntFarm has programs to teach the kids a huge variety of skills from construction to arboriculture. Even better, several of these programs include internships that provide “paid on-the-job training.”
Making sure that his kids get paid is a priority for Hatley. Several program participants fall into the “at risk” or “opportunity youth” categories. They frequently come from homes with low incomes.
“If we only have it as a volunteer opportunity, it’s not realistic for [a lot of our kids],” Hatley explains. “A lot of them contribute to their families. It becomes a barrier if we don’t have any wage associated with these positions. It’s a modest wage, but it can eliminate that barrier and also give them a taste of the real professional world.”
It all feeds back into harnessing the power of the community to build a brighter world. And he’ll take all the help he can get. As he says, “We want to take youth out to public lands, we want to clear trash, we want to leave our lands better than we found them, and we want to build skills while we’re doing it. And whoever supports that effort and wants to be a part of it, we will take support from any organization, institution, or individual.” That’s not just money. AntFarm is always hunting for experts to contact them to provide training and guidance for its programs.
At the end of the day, Hatley remains committed to the underlying aspirations of AntFarm. “Every time someone comes to us, we will try. If the community has a need we try to fill it. We may not always be the best at it. We ask for grace in our failings. But, we’re going to give it our best shot. And we’re lucky to have had a lot of success and community support.”
You can provide financial support or lend a hand by reaching out through the organization’s website, AntFarmYouthServices.com.