City Kids Selected for Vail Resorts Skiing Partnership
City Kids has been selected as a grantee for Vail Resort + Katz Amsterdam Foundation Epic for Everyone Youth Connection to Winter Sports Program, a collaboration to expand youth access to outdoor recreation– see the Vail press release here.
Rob Katz, founder of the Katz Amsterdam Foundation and CEO of Vail Resorts, made a five-year commitment in 2019 to support outdoor access for youth.
“Vail Resorts is committed to making the sport more accessible through Epic for Everyone, including growing our youth access program,” said Katz. “We’re proud to be able to support and accelerate efforts to get kids on mountains across the country. By partnering with regional nonprofits closely tied to the communities surrounding our resort locations, we’re looking forward to introducing kids to skiing and snowboarding who otherwise may not have access—broadening lifelong engagement by removing some of the sports’ barriers to entry.”
City Kids was selected for this opportunity given our long-term programmatic design and our ability to expose a set group of youth to skiing and snowboarding over a multi-year time period.
Program funding will provide participating City Kids youth with free lift tickets, ski gear, transportation, ski and ride school, meals, and equipment rentals for five on-hill ski/snowboarding lessons at Vail’s White Tail Ski Resort in Mercersburg, PA, under two hours from DC. City Kids will also work with the Katz Amsterdam Foundation to develop and expand programs related to outdoor access.
“We are so excited to be adding a skiing and snowboarding program to City Kids,” said Sarah Cryder, City Kids Executive Director. “ It has long been a dream of the organization to expose our youth more deeply to winter sports, and who knows, maybe we will have the opportunity to take what the kids learn on mountains in the east to ski the mountains of the west in Jackson Hole, in the near future.”
Recruitment for the program will begin mid-November, and “on-hill” days will take place in January and February of next year. Plans are already in the works to expand this initial 2022 partnership with City Kids for lots more skiing and snowboarding in winters to come!
