While the world moves online at lightspeed, thousands of Chicago’s youth are opting for the outdoors.
Chicago Voyagers is helping at-risk Windy City teens find a different current, one that is forming resilience, responsibility, and agency.
Since 2008, the organization has served more than 5,000 Chicagoland middle and high schoolers through “adventure therapy,” a non-traditional solution to psychological, emotional, and behavioral challenges. The approach utilizes novel, challenging outdoor experiences as a medium to teach life skills that can transform young lives.
Hear how Chicago Voyagers is using adventure therapy to give at-risk Chicago teens skills that could change their lives in our full conversation with executive director Alex Goodfellow:
Alex Goodfellow serves as the nonprofit’s executive director, taking the mantle upon founder Bernie Rupe’s retirement in 2025.
“Pushing yourself out of that comfort zone is a skill for life,” Goodfellow said. “We know that it’s an amazing opportunity for a teen, but that’s a skill that they can take forward in a job in a school, with a relationship, as a parent, whatever that is.”
Challenges common to modern U.S. teens, such as anxiety, social isolation, and other mental health struggles, are heightened in underprivileged youth by trauma, poverty, and lack of access to long-term solutions. One of those solutions is rich outdoor experience.
World-class forest preserves, state parks, and Lake Michigan envelop northeastern Illinois, but, according to Goodfellow, many of Chicago’s vulnerable youth are unaware of such opportunities, are unable to reach them, or both.
Chicago Voyager kids are offered the chance to unhook themselves from the buzzing chaos of social media and connect to the healing power of nature.
While they accomplish feats of outdoor adventure like backpacking trips, rock climbing, and kayaking, they learn of their ability to deal with the difficulties waiting for them when they return.
“If they put their mind to it and they want to, there’s so much to be said for that resiliency and grit that is built within doing something that is not your norm, that is not what your friends and neighbors may be doing, and pushing yourself out of that comfort zone,” Goodfellow explained.
“We want youth to feel that healing nature of solitude and quiet and connection and how meaningful that can be to their sense of self. And then you can replicate that another time when you’re feeling that anxiety or that stress. That creates another lifelong ability to regulate your emotions and your behavior.”
Chicago Voyagers uses the platform of outdoor challenges to initiate meaningful, reflective conversations that help to solidify the lessons learned.
Partner surveys have shown that the effects are real. Youth involved in their adventure therapy programming show a 92% increase in responsibility, 94% in confidence, and a 92% increase in responsibility.
To boot, the behavioral improvements lead to repeated increases in GPAs and a 65% decrease in in-school disciplinary actions.
The children learn that they are able to climb walls, both physical and otherwise, that hard things are challenges to be overcome, instead of immovable barriers.
“It’s a beautiful, incredible thing to see people physically and emotionally push themselves in this way,” Goodfellow said. “And you can see that growth... It’s amazing. I will always say that these kids are so much cooler and better and braver than I am.”
Many of the “voyagers” also form long-term relationships with each other and with those guiding them, injecting positive adult role models into lives that often lack healthy mentorship.
In the end, Goodfellow says, they’re just kids. Kids who face hardship that many never will, but who also are learning of their potential to both climb mountains and move them.
“I want them to believe in themselves. I want them to know that they can do anything and be anything and that they are capable,” Goodfellow said.
“I think that we struggle because we don’t feel capable of things. We don’t feel like we can do something. To have us in your corner and help you build that and believe in yourself, that’s our future. We need people that want to continue to guide our community, our city, our country into greatness.”
Click here to learn more about Chicago Voyagers’ work.