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Adventure Risk Challenge (ARC) is a youth development and outdoor education nonprofit dedicated to facilitating an immersive, multi-year program progression that increases access to four goals areas – literacy development, outdoor experiences, leadership development, and community building – for rural, low-income and English Learner high school students. Through ARC’s programming, students develop positive social and cooperative skills, raise their overall academic performance, learn about their role in stewardship of our natural environment, and become more engaged members of their communities.

What makes ARC most unique and impactful is that: (1) We have long-term relationships with our students, and they find belonging within ARC, among their peers and the adult staff members; and (2) Our curriculum integrates literacy development (especially writing and public speaking) into the more traditional aspects of outdoor education (recreational activities and leadership development).

Programs Apply

The Need

The majority of California high school students are not passing the English Language Arts/Literacy component of the CAASPP exam, indicating they do not have basic college English proficiencies.

Research shows that wilderness/outdoor experiences provide learning opportunities that traditional classrooms do not.

What we do

ARC’s common-core aligned English Language curriculum offers hundreds of hours of instruction to address this need for its participants.

In ARC’s outdoor learning environment, with a 6:1 student-to-staff ratio, students change their perception of academics and shift the trajectory of their lives.