August 9, 2004

A group from Denver's Glenarm Recreation Center shoots the rapids.

On a hot midsummer day, the broad and muddy South Platte River on the southwest edge of urban Denver, Colorado, looks invitingly cool. Some of the kids are wading, and all of them are waiting to get this adventure under way.

"I'm going to say, 'Forward, one, two, and everybody paddle,' can you handle that?" Greg Pratt tells them. Two lefts, one right, one left, he wields an imaginary paddle with his arms, demonstrating how working together they can take the boat where they want it to go.

All 14 of the kids, ages nine through 12, are eager to board the big yellow rubber rafts, but they listen politely while Greg Pratt tells them where to sit, how to sit and how to control the boats. Coming along are two additional RiverReach guides and Steve Wheeler, recreation coordinator at the city's Glenarm Recreation Center where the kids spend a good deal of their time in summer.

Glenarm is one of 20-some city recreation centers in Denver, most in low-income neighborhoods. River rafting is new to this group, and Lynsey Chapman, age 9, admits to being a little scared about the promised whitewater.

Pratt gives them the basics of safety, demonstrating how to reach in and seize the life jacket of anybody who should fall overboard.

"It might be fun," he says. "In fact, maybe we'll push Judah in today just to try it out."

Judah Biffle, a parent volunteer, smiles as everybody laughs, including his son Ronnie who will share one of the rafts with him.

Finding the Wild City
As executive director of the RiverReach Youth Initiative, Pratt leads trips like this almost every day during the summer. RiverReach, a nonprofit organization, has been working with Denver youth for more than a decade. Most raft trip participants have worked on a community service project—often one connected with the environmental health of the river—and are rewarded for their efforts with a rafting trip.

"It's an opportunity to show the kids that the environment is right here," says Pratt. "For me, that's the most important thing we do. Even in the middle of the city, there are birds, beavers and muskrats. A couple of years ago there was even a bear right down where we launch the rafts. I've seen deer right downtown. It's not the same as a big whitewater trip in the wilderness, but it gives kids the idea that wildlife exists right here in the middle of our urban jungle."

As the rafts drift between streets and industrial buildings, Pratt directs the attention of his passengers to a row of almost perfect brown spheres, each with a silver-dollar-sized hole in its center, on the underside of a highway bridge.

"Those are nests," he says. "Anybody know what kind of bird makes those nests?" He waits. "What you do after you chew your food," he says, and makes a gulping sound.

"Swallow," shouts Ronnie Biffle.

A River Renewed
The rafts drift slowly downstream, the highways and buildings giving way to broad banks where ducklings follow their mother beneath overhanging brush on the left and pedestrians and bicycles pass above the river's grassy border on the right.

"What kind of bird is that?" asks Caleb Rayburn, 11, pointing to a large, white bird standing stilt-legged in the shallows ahead.

Pratt identifies an egret, then a night heron, and urges the kids to keep an eye open for turtles.

The South Platte urban waterway is a point of pride for the Denver of today. But when RiverReach founder Jim Pearson moved to Denver in 1971, there was nothing to be proud of in the river once described as 'too thick to drink, too thin to plow.'"

"The South Platte was pretty much a sewer and a dump for much of the Denver area," Pearson says.

Beginning in the mid-1970s with the organization of the non-profit South Platte River Greenway Foundation, however, the city began dumping dollars into the river instead of trash. Over the following decades, dumps and wasteland became parks and bikeways, and the river became a river again. But Pearson, a Denver attorney and avid whitewater rafter, didn't see a corresponding renewal in use of the river itself.

With fellow owners of a local sport company, Alpenglow Marine and Sport, Pearson started the Platte River Rafting Company in 1990 to change that. A year later, they reorganized as the non-profit River Heritage Society, running raft trips on the river for Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, seniors -- any groups in Denver that might not go to the mountains for whitewater adventures but would be interested finding a piece of that adventure in Denver.

"But what we found," Pearson says, "is that we floated through some of the poorer neighborhoods of Denver and some of the kids loved to come down and throw rocks at us from the bridges or the shore. We thought, 'Instead of getting in fights with these kids can we get them involved in our programs?'"

Two girls from Project Hope help plant native species on the river bank.

The River Heritage Foundation refocused its mission on at-risk kids, and in 1997 they changed the name to RiverReach Youth Initiative. To date, RiverReach has provided outdoor adventures to more than 25,000 inner city children, and those children have logged more than 50,000 volunteer hours.

"Earn It."
"We're firm believers in not giving anything away," says Ron Picaso, RiverReach board member and assistant supervisor of outdoor recreation for the City of Denver. "Early on, we came up with the philosophy of 'Earn it.' That takes away that label that you're getting this because you"re disadvantaged or underprivileged or a person of color."

At least 50 percent of the kids who raft with RiverReach have earned it through community service. When adult organizations and other youth groups pay RiverReach to guide raft trips, the money goes to support free trips for young people who have volunteered in their community.

RiverReach has connections with a host of local youth programs. Project Storefront, for example was launched in the early '90s as a collaboration between Denver police and the Denver Housing Authority to improve police relationships with people in public housing. Projects such as cleaning up the South Platte River bank gave kids a sense of ownership in their community, says Denver Police Sgt. Mark Fleece, who got involved with the River Heritage Society in 1993. And the outdoor experience offered by RiverReach proved to be a powerful reward, Fleece says.

"We probably had kids in those groups we worked with that ended up in trouble," he says, "but I can tell you that the majority of the kids we worked with went on to have very productive lives, and I still keep in touch with many of them. Some are in college. I know one kid who's been accepted to medical school. It's a very positive influence, especially at that age."

Kids from Hope Communities, an affordable housing program, have planted native species along the river, pulled up non-native species, erected a fence. Denver Kids Inc., a program that supports students who are struggling in public school, has also done waterway improvement on the South Platte. Escuela Tlatelolco, a private school, requires community service from both students and parents. Kids from these and many other organizations earn a turn at the RiverReach experience.

"This year we're doing a cooperative program with the Platte Forum, a nonprofit arts organization on the banks of the Platte River," says Pratt. "We have four different dates when we're taking kids out on the river with an artist from the Denver area and using the river as a way of exploring art."

The trips are done in partnership with Metro Denver Partners, a youth mentoring program, and YMCA groups. RiverReach has a broad reach, and multilevel partnerships link it with those who need it and those who want to help it all over the Denver area.

Beyond Denver
Not everything the organization does takes place in the city.

"Part of RiverReach is to seek funding for programs," says Pratt, "and in summer, we donate trips elsewhere on other Colorado rivers through the Colorado River Outfitters Association, a trade group of rafting organizations."

RiverReach and Denver Parks and Recreation also launched a ski program at Loveland Ski Area west of Denver, where eligible kids who satisfy homework requirements and participate in community volunteer projects get a free (to them) ski day with lessons. Between 1,000 and 2,000 Denver kids have that opportunity each year.

And there's the annual two-night, three-day pack trip in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area southwest of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The kids pack into a fishing camp and learn how to ride and care for their horses. A Denver Parks and Recreation Program, it was launched by Ron Picaso more than two decades ago as a one-day horseback trip. Picaso credits RiverReach with helping to fund its expansion to a pack trip and find financial assistance to keep it going.

Keeping the Rafts Afloat
Funding for RiverReach comes from a long list of sponsors and contributors and grants, money from the City of Denver, from corporations and individuals. Each year, supporters and others are invited to the RiverReach Rendezvous, a charity event which raises most of the organization's funding, between $55,000 and $95,000 each year. It's a glittery event of tuxedoes and gowns, bringing together city dignitaries, personalities and politicians and the occasional Hollywood celebrity.

Glenarm Recreation Center kids celebrate their river adventure.

Such a scene is far from the minds of the Glenarm Recreation Center kids, of course, as they spin their boats on the quiet water, splashing each other and ramming.

The group gets quiet with anticipation and a little dread as the roar of the first rapids approaches. Digging in frantically with their paddles, they rock and lurch and scream as the rafts shoot one by one down the first smooth chute through standing waves and snow-white foam.

And then they pull the rafts to the riverbank and go swimming.