Positive Youth Development Utilizing Extreme Sports

RezRIDERS

RezRIDERS (Reducing Risk through Interpersonal Development,Empowerment, Resiliency and Self Determination) is an Indigenous culturally-centered positive youth development project that utilizes extreme sport and experiential education (EE-ES). RezRIDERS pairsEE-ES with an evidence-based cognitive-behavioral curriculum creatingactivity-clusters specifically; snowboarding paired with core values,rafting paired with hope for the future, rock climbing paired withself-determination and team building, The program culminates with a youth-driven community action project. Using the Community-basedParticipatory Research (CBPR) approach, the project is overseen by theTribal Research Team (TRT) who double as both research partners andcultural project mentors for the youth.

In April 2011, Dr. Nina Wallerstein (Principal Investigator) and teamwere awarded a pilot grant to develop the Tribal Research Team (DHHS/NIH/NCRR grant #1 ULIRR031977-01, The University of New Mexico,Clinical & Translational Science Center). The goal of the pilotproject was to establish and support the TRT, for them to experiencean abbreviated version of the curriculum (snowboarding and rafting),and revise the curriculum based on those experiences. This pilot hasbeen an incredible success and has lead to a 3-year R-34 applicationto NIDA which received a very favorable score of 10 (out of 10possible). The R-34 funding will build upon the existing TRT, andexpand the curriculum to 10th grade youth. The earliest anticipated start will be April 2012 for this project. We hope to report moresuccess at a later date!