NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — More than 200 local children spent two weeks every summer zipping through the trees and overcoming obstacles at Windsor Lake for nearly a quarter century. 

 

But the pandemic and a decline in volunteers delivered a double whammy to the annual ROPES summer camp. 

 

The organizers last week voted in a board of directors and officially shifted to a scholarship format to aid local high school graduates and community events focused on youth. 

 

"We were getting, in 2019, to the point of we were looking for ... who wants to step up? Who wants to be the next generation?" said David Sacco, a retired North Adams police lieutenant and longtime organizer. "We're watching these younger people to us now and having their little kids up there, which is how I started with my three kids. ... It was hard, but we could get all the help we wanted."

 

That's changed a lot in recent years as the founders aged and available volunteers dried up. 

 

ROPES, which stands for Respecting Other People Encouraging Self-esteem, was a free summer program that ran for one week twice during the summer. The program pitted fifth- and sixth-graders from the Northern Berkshires against massive vertical obstacle courses that sat high in the tree canopies.  

 

The goal of the camp was to instill in children respect toward each other, teamwork, and the willingness to try, and to get them into the outdoors. 

 

The camp grew out of the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program in 1996 with a $38,000 grant from the Governor's Alliance Against Drugs split between the city, Pittsfield, Richmond and Sheffield. North Adams had the longest-lived program and it was staffed by first responders and teachers from around Northern Berkshire and largely funded by donations, bake sales and car washes. 

 

Campers who attended at least two camps were eligible to come back a year later as mentors to their younger classmates. 

 

The last camp was held in 2019 and was canceled the following year because of the pandemic and continued restrictions in the subsequent year made it too difficult to hold. 

 

Sacco and Laurie Tuper said they and others had tried to work out a system with fewer volunteers that could still do fundraising to keep the camp open. Sacco said a lot of personal time and effort had been put in, such as Tuper cooking up 80 pounds of goulash to feed the kids during the week. 

 

"But we couldn't get anybody to bite. So we were going to try again the next year, and then, well, COVID comes in, right? So now we had, what, three years of we couldn't do it," he said.  

 

Tuper added, "which means we lost all our facilitators, we lost all our mentors that were coming up from the campers."

 

Now there was only a core of maybe five or six people to try to take on the task of restarting camp. 

 

"By the time it looked like we were ready to go, we couldn't get any interest at all," said Sacco. "It was either going to be us all over again, and after three more years, we were like, I don't want to be 65 and climbing a tree, and we couldn't find anybody that wanted to put the time, energy and effort."

 

It made sense for the group to shift to the scholarship format and it's already provided some relief in the community and, to date, has granted $4,000 in scholarships, $500 to each high school. Tuper said the scholarships have been in place for two years now but it took a while to the grant paperwork together.

 

"If there are youth groups — emphasis on youth groups — that want to try to do a function ... for example, say, UNO wanted to do a 3-on-3 tournament in the summer at the basketball to get the kids involved, and they want to do T-shirts for each team, and they want to get some trophies and whatever," said Sacco. "And they go, Yeah, well, where are we going to come up to $500 to do that, right? Well, here would be an option."

 

Northern Berkshire Youth ROPES will operate under the auspices of the city of North Adams, which will continue to manage its account. The main fundraisers now are the campgrounds at Noel Field Athletic Complex for the annual Freshgrass Festival and the biannual Solid Sound music festival.

 

Sacco and Tuper said those events are also in great need of volunteers and they're hoping youth groups that apply for event grants will pay it forward by lending a hand.

 

"We need help to keep it going. Basically, there just not enough of us to work the campground," said Tuper.

 

The deadline for summer and fall grants is June 30 but ROPES will entertain some applications for events happening between now and Dec. 31. The form and instructions can be found here.