Serving Lakewood, Wheat Ridge and beyond
WEEK OF JUNE 8, 2023
VOLUME 39 | ISSUE 46
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When online classes head outdoors Arvada homeless
ministry in talks with city to move out of Olde Town BY RYLEE DUNN RDUNN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Before rafting, the students helped Jeffco Open Spaces at Crown Hill Park.
Students of COCDA earn real-world experience with class aimed at skill-building and offline adventures BY JO DAVIS JDAVIS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
There are some things that kids cannot learn in an online classroom. That’s why Destinations Career Academy of Colorado social studies teacher Hunter Stafford started Outdoor Leadership for CODCA students. “Outdoor Leadership is a Career and Technical Education class at
CODCA, a public, mostly online high school that serves students across the state of Colorado,” a school spokesperson said. The class is hybrid in that it is conducted via Zoom for much of the year. The students have lectures, book discussions and projects, but four times a year, they get to go outside for the class, too. The course is written, taught and guided by Stafford. He designs the
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lessons for the Zoom classes and the outdoor trips. They take about four trips a year. The students went backpacking near the Loveland Ski Area in August, went out to earn their Wilderness First Aid certification near Westminster in October and snowshoed three miles to High Lonesome Hut near Fraser in February. On all of these trips, the students learned some kind of survival skills, like avalanche safety, navigation and environmental safety. The final trip was a rafting trip
Months after the City of Arvada held a study session to address the issue of homelessness within the city, city team members have begun meeting with representatives from Mission Arvada — a homeless ministry based at The Rising Church in Olde Town — to discuss moving Mission Arvada out of the historic district. The homeless ministry has been at the center of a debate between city stakeholders over its location in the heart of Arvada’s most traffic commercial district. Additionally, Mission Arvada (while the two names are sometimes used interchangeably by stakeholders, Mission Arvada refers to the homeless ministry and The Rising refers to the church congregation) is struggling to pay its employees because the City of Arvada declined to sign off on Mission Arvada’s application for a Department of Housing and Urban Development Emergency Solutions Grant last September, according to Mission Arvada Program Director Karen Cowling. Mission Arvada serves about 60-65 homeless individuals a day — roughly 500 per quarter — and has helped over 165 people get into permanent housing over the past
SEE OUTDOORS, P4
SEE MISSION ARVADA, P2
PHOTO BY HUNTER STAFFORD
WINDOW
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