After a day of roving the high seas of Lake Nighthorse, one hand on the tiller the other on the main sheet, Zara Holmstrand would come home and talk nonstop about what she had learned.
“She would come home and just, like, be a wealth of information,” Zara’s mother, Mel Holmstrand, said.
Zara spent two weeks of 2024 in summer programming with Sail Durango, thanks to a scholarship through Team UP La Plata. She was one of 530 children to benefit from the program last year.
The loquacious 10-year-old was a first-time sailor when she stepped foot aboard one of Sail Durango’s vessel.
“The boat’s more in charge of you than you are of it,” she said, recalling her efforts to right a capsized dinghy.
Team UP is a community initiative kick-started in late 2022 in response to the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. After La Plata County awarded the initiative $350,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act funds dedicated to addressing the pandemic’s social impacts, a group of partners held meetings to suss out where the greatest need was.
“Through those community input sessions, they identified the cost of out-of-school time programming as the greatest barrier in getting kids involved in out-of-school time enrichment, which is so key to mental health because of the trusted adult relationships, the peer relationships (and) the learning enrichment,” said Caroline Hoge.
Hoge is the Team Up La Plata coordinator and works for United Way of Southwest Colorado, which provides much of the administrative backbone for the program.
Scholarships for out-of-school programming is just one of the ways that Team UP is working to address the health, well-being, educational success and financial strength of families in Southwest Colorado.
Busy parents who fill critical roles in the workforce and cannot afford summer programming for their children say the opportunities are invaluable.
“We wanted them to have something that they could do, something educational that would inspire them, that would be investing time in something meaningful that would make them grow,” said Ivan Robles, speaking through a translator.
Robles works in the food service industry and his two daughters, ages 4 and 8, participated in summer programs at The Powerhouse and the Boys and Girls Club of La Plata County in 2024.
The scholarships keep parents in the workforce – Mel Holmstrand said the cost of summer programming was so high that it would have almost been more cost effective not to work and stay home with Zara.
“To be able to get that scholarship was, like, summer-changing,” Holmstrand said.
Team UP tries to meet families where they are at without stigma, Hoge said, which means families don’t have to prove a financial need.
“We try to make it clear that we understand how the state of the economy and how what is recognized as being ‘income limited’ is not reflecting the reality of financial hardship in our community,” she said.
Not only do parents say the scholarships keep them in the workforce, but they’re grateful for what it means for their children.
To keep his children home would “have been cutting their wings,” Robles said.
“At an emotional level, at a physical, social – moral, even – because by being there, being with other kids of their own age, it creates bonds,” he said.
Often, the alternative for kids who aren’t engaged in some sort of program is time left at home on a screen.
“We spend so many times so much time behind screens, whether that’s work or social media or whatever the case would be, and that’s not real most of the time,” said Jason St. Mary, executive director of La Plata Youth Services, a founding partner of Team UP. “And I honestly believe that it lends itself to mental health struggles.”
LPYS spearheaded summer backpacking programs in the San Juan Mountains.
Organizations that participate in the Team UP summer scholarship program, such as LPYS and Sail Durango, also have to match at least half the funding provided to them for scholarships,
“Sailing is traditionally a white male sport that you know requires a lot of money to get into,” said Katie James, one of Sail Durango’s founders and the director of programming and operations.
She’s trying to break that down.
“Community sailing is more about giving people access to the water, and breeding that environmental stewardship that comes with having a connection with your local waterway,” she said.
Participating in Team UP also helped prompt Sail Durango to grow its own scholarship program.
Applications for summer 2025 programming scholarships are expected to open in March, Hoge said. Currently, Team Up (which is mostly grant funded) has secured enough money to fund about 200 kids.
rschafir@durangoherald.com