Sokaogon Chippewa Community News
Summer Youth Program Has Many Accomplishments
By Tesheena Honkala, Teen Workforce Development Coordinator
In June, the ACE program hired youth ages 13 to 17 to work at the Hoffman property on the garden, the tree orchard, and to help with mowing lawns. They also cleaned up the Pow Wow grounds, the playgrounds, the baseball field, along the roadways, and at the boat landings for Mole Lake and Sand Lake. They also helped scrape and paint the Tribal Office. Our program held raffles and several of the winners had youth mow their lawns in the summer.
Not all days were workdays. A couple days were too hot, so we went to Sand Lake for a dip. We also learned to play Lacrosse, helped build the sweat lodge, and participated in the Healing Walk. The youth also helped pick Cedar and gifted it to our Elders.
The Veterans program provided lunches – thank you Dean VanZile! During some of our lunch hours, we had guest speakers including: Detective Sergeant/Youth Prevention Tony Crum and Detective Sergeant D.J. Wilson with his K-9 partner, Thunder, from Forest County Sheriff’s Department, Kerry Fox and Carla Storm from the Brighter Days program, and language class with Makoons, Dillion Wagnitz and Marilyn Miller from Nicolet College.
We raised money for our end of year trip by selling food at the C-Store’s concession stand. We ended the nine-week program by going to Wisconsin Dells and stayed at The Wilderness.
Participating youth were Alexander Aguirre, Armando Aguirre, Trevor Cable, Kellie Jones, Logan Munday, Derek Olds, Marshall Polar, Jayden Quade, Konner Quade, Zachary Randall and Annika Tuchalski.
