{"id":11619,"date":"2019-07-08T17:26:30","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T17:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=11619"},"modified":"2019-07-08T17:26:30","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T17:26:30","slug":"basecamp-founders-open-after-school-program-at-old-waldorf-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/08\/basecamp-founders-open-after-school-program-at-old-waldorf-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"BaseCamp Founders Open After-School Program At Old Waldorf Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Health-and-wellness center to come later\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Hayden Seder<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"What used to be the home of the Waldorf Academy north of Bellevue is slated to become the area\u2019s latest after-school facility and eventually a health-and-wellness workshop center, too.<\/p>\n

The county made it official last week by granting Whitney and Mat Gershater a conditional use permit for the property at 100 Mustang Lane\u2014a nearly 1.5-acre residence that includes a 1,000-square-foot schoolhouse and garden area.<\/p>\n

The Gershaters are well-known in the Wood River Valley as the owners of Idaho BaseCamp, an educational nonprofit near Mackay specializing in building knowledge of environment, community, and individual impact on nature. The Gershaters would like to bring that same type of education program closer to town and, specifically, to school-aged children in the south Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe program is going to look like a lot of the programs up at BaseCamp,\u201d Whitney said. \u201cWe got to thinking about how we can have more of a presence in the Valley and work with students on a regular basis where we can really have an impact using some of our core values that we instill in our organization: respect for all, courage and personal responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program will be for up to 35 nine- to 12-year-olds to participate in a range of activities, from hiking and playing on the river to touring local businesses or helping at farms during harvest season. Arts, music and crafting will figure into the mix, too. The Gershaters said it will be called the Idaho BaseCamp Out-of-School Program.<\/p>\n

Due to budget cuts in the Blaine County School District, less transport was available for students to get to after-school programs. Through Mountain Adventure Tours\u2014which owns the land that houses Idaho BaseCamp\u2014the Gershaters realized they had access to transportation resources that could pick students up from schools in Hailey and Bellevue and provide a mini-mountain adventure tour on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want the students to be active participants in the daily ins and outs of our community functioning,\u201d Whitney Gershater said of the variety of activities the program has planned. \u201cWe want to bring in local musicians. We want local artists for crafting and we want to do a closing circle each day with some mindfulness around being together and transitioning back to home.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program will start Aug. 19, the beginning of the school year.<\/p>\n

While many after-school programs cost money\u2014typically up to $10 per day\u2014the Gershaters\u2019 version will run roughly double to cover the costs of such an expanded menu of options. Thanks to a grant from the Wood River Women\u2019s Foundation, the program already has scholarship funding available to help certain families lower the cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want anyone to feel intimidated about asking, \u2018How can we make this work for our family?\u2019\u201d Whitney Gershater said. \u201cI don\u2019t want anyone looking at the price and thinking it\u2019s not worth a phone call. It\u2019s worth it for your kid to have this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

As it\u2019s the first year, Whitney expects about 20-25 kids in August, all on a first-come, first-served basis.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Since the property was previously an academic facility, there\u2019s little that needs to be done to transform it. The schoolhouse itself is already primed and the extensive gardens need to be worked on a bit so that the children in the program can do gardening there. When the after-school program is not in effect, the Gershaters plan to host workshops hosted by professional health-and-wellness practitioners. Details are still being worked out with the county.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health-and-wellness center to come later\u00a0 By Hayden Seder What used to be the home of the Waldorf Academy north of Bellevue is slated to become the area\u2019s latest after-school facility and eventually a health-and-wellness workshop center, too. The county made it official last week by granting Whitney and Mat Gershater a conditional use permit for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,20,36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-nonprofit","9":"category-slider"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}