 A group of teens has taken up forestry as part of their time at KidsPeace, a therapeutic residential treatment facility in Ellsworth. The 126-year-old organization offers a safe haven for teens with behavioral problems and mental illness, while emphasizing community service and recreation. A joint project between KidsPeace and the Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust, forestry program directors say that repairing trails and thinning the forest has been a successful way for the teens to build self-esteem and camaraderie.
KidsPeace's mission is to give hope, help and healing to kids facing crisis. At KidsPeace, crisis is often defined as kids displaying aggression or out-of-control behavior at school. Some are at risk for suicide. But on a recent rainy afternoon in Ellsworth, none of those behaviors were evident in a group of seven teens from KidsPeace who were helping a local forester on the 4,000-acre Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust Property.
Desiree B. is 17. She's been in the forestry program at KidsPeace for a year and a half. "Today we're going to haul the brush out and then hopefully make a bonfire, but it's raining so I don't know if it's going to work or not." Desiree says rainy days aren't ideal in the forestry program, but she says she enjoys helping the forester, Jake Maier. “It just seems that being out here we can give back for the state helping us and everything like that so we come here and just kind of work around. And Jake's really nice to us; he kinda just shows us what to do. And just being out here just helps you with like mindful skills and stuff like that."
Desiree drags brush to a clearing, where the others are beginning to light a bonfire which they'll use to cook dinner. Josh M. is 14 and is sawing logs for the fire. "Right now we're burning all the brush we cut down like a couple weeks ago. Usually I cut trees down, the ones that like make the forest look better and neater. And we make brush piles and then we burn it like we are right now." Josh says he loves the challenge of building a big fire and keeping it going. And he likes that the program gets them off the residential campus for a few hours. "It gets me off the unit. And like if I don't have anything to do, it keeps me out of trouble."
Josh and Desiree are helping Jake Maier, a forester and the property steward for the Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust. He spends every Tuesday afternoon with KidsPeace, assigning tasks and instructing the group. "I don't have any problems anymore thinning the forest and to get better spacing in the trees so to give the little trees a better start into life. And it's the same for the kids. The kids saw by doing that, they help the birds, they help the trees, they help themselves. They really love to take care of the forest and being a little bit taken care of themselves."
Maier works closely with Hans Krichels, the coordinator of the Kids Give Back community service program at KidsPeace. Krichels started the forestry program two years ago. “What was innovative was to take the one day shot community service program and turn it into ongoing projects and to make it a collaboration with another organization.” Krichels says many of the KidsPeace kids have not had many opportunities to hike, swim and otherwise explore the woods in Maine. He calls that "nature deficit disorder." "These are Maine kids. I mean, they in one way or another, all come from the woods. I mean, their parents are largely dysfunctional, but if they have an uncle or a grandparent or grandmother even, every kid's got somebody who's worked in the woods. And the whole idea of forestry and being in the woods, nature, connections, whatever, really resonates with these kids."
KidsPeace is a 126-year-old nonprofit that offers a variety of treatment programs, foster care and family services nationwide. In Maine, its offices are in Biddeford, South Portland, Lewiston, Manchester and Orono. The residential facility in Ellsworth sits on Graham Lake. Executive Director Jean Dickson says the natural setting is an important component of healing for the children. “The kids you know, they find it very spiritual sometimes. I've done this for ten years and I started out working directly with the kids and the most fun I think and the best that I ever saw the kids was when we were out hiking or we were in the woods and they love to go to the water and just sit or they just love to be outside. And it's a safe place to do it and it's beautiful."
KidsPeace has just opened a residential program for children with autism, and houses about 30 kids on its Ellsworth campus. Most stays last about seven or eight months before the children return home, Dickson says. |