Big City Mountaineers and Summit for Someone Experience Record Growth in 2007

Big City Mountaineers, a 501(c)3 non profit dedicated to providing urban youth with challenging and meaningful outdoor experiences, saw its biggest growth in many years, growing 70 percent in 2007 over the previous year.

BCM’s benefit climb program, Backpacker Magazine’s Summit For Someone, also saw record growth in 2007. Offered originally to five climbers in 2004, it has now grown in to the largest benefit climb program in the country. In 2007, 350 climbers participated in Summit For Someone on 11 peaks across the country.

The growth of Backpacker Magazine’s Summit for Someone program allowed Big City Mountaineers to expand its national teen recreational mentoring program, helped broaden the scope of how youth can stay involved with BCM by employing teens in California, Colorado and Illinois, and establish a California program office to support BCM’s largest program area in the country.

“No matter what metric you consider, 2007 has been one of our most remarkable years in close to our twenty year history. Although its going to be tough to beat it in the future, we’ve made so much progress in recent years, I’ve stopped making predictions,” comments Mark Godley, Big City Mountaineers’ Executive Director.

“We’ve really come a long way in 2007, and that has set the ground work for a successful 2008,” adds Program Director Erin Mcvoy.

BCM is the largest non-profit in the country devoted to working exclusively with under-resourced teens by using the outdoors as a transformational element in their lives. BCM runs its recreational mentoring program in most major urban centers throughout the country, with its largest program areas in Denver and San Francisco.