Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”

Plains Youth InterACTION

GPRC's Plains Youth InterACTION program operates in all three states (TX, CO, and SD) and functions as the supporting network and leadership development of GPRC's on-the-ground prairie wilderness recovery projects. Our youth, through customized Ecological Health principles and action, have a key role in the advancement of their own leadership and technical skills while producing measurable, tangible ecosystem protections and public education, advocacy and community health. 

Focus: Healing Ourselves through Healing the Earth. We blend social work with ecological recovery and protection.

Plains Youth Inter-ACTION brings together some of the most impacted kids to take care of some of the most impacted problems. Through active, creative projects in Ecological Health restoration and advocacy, and our “Living like a Watershed” theme, inner city and rural reservation kids develop strong character, leadership, personal responsibility and ownership of the consequences of their actions, all anchored in a newly established sense of ecological identity.

Fort Worth Youth InterACTION on a trip up to Turner Falls, OK

If you define GPRC down to one word, that word is “health.” We must get healthy again. Prairie/Plains youth of different cultures – particularly from our inner cities and Indian reservations – assess and address the personal health and environmental issues that are critical to sustaining self, community, and our unique Prairie/Plains environment. Our youth face many personal hurdles, including HIV/AIDS, diabetes, alcohol, gang and school violence, pollution, ecological problems, depression, and more, but in the GPRC Youth InterACTION program, by working to tackle problems larger than themselves, and by working cross-culturally, they learn to see themselves as an active, beneficial part of the interconnected world.

GPRC’s youth program, operating out of all three locations, Fort Worth, Wounded Knee/Porcupine Districts, and Denver, has largely served Black and Indian youth, but we are expanding it to become fully multicultural, and working to standardize a national model that can be available for others to adopt anywhere, properly adjusted of course to different eco-regions. We are also developing an Ecological Health curriculum that can be available for local school districts on the Great Plains. Many of our ‘at-risk’ kids share the same social challenges, but often have little meaningful interaction with each other, let alone the chance to gain skills in problem resolution and leadership. Youth of color in particular have little access to, or personal say in, environmental and health issues, things that many of them care deeply about, while it has been assumed by others that they don’t. It seems these kids are rarely given a chance to participate in substantial proactive solutions.

Thunder Valley Youth InterACTION, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

Fort Worth Prairie Park

Using the Socratic educational method of self-challenge and self-discovery, GPRC mentors and counselors help develop conscious students who understand the meaning, context, and consequence of their hands-on opportunities. In this way, a young person will gain confidence in her or his ability to make meaningful contributions to social change, and that earned confidence then becomes, over time, lasting and integral. Just like we work to give the prairie animals a protected area, we work to give our kids a Safe Place, with that Safe Place first taking root in the self-worth and confidence they develop within themselves. Here you have kids facing multiple hard-core problems in life protecting buffaloes and prairie dogs, grasslands and riversheds, organizing action campaigns and community clean-ups, and educating other kids and adults about ecological wellness, diabetes prevention, healthier and safer living, progressive health and nutrition, and more. We’ve watched withered children bloom as participants in the human family through this program, and their diligent, enthusiastic work and commitment is a challenge to adults in this world.

Download the Plains Youth InterACTION Youth Wheel

What people are saying about GPRC: Lorenzo Wilborn, (6 foot 2), GPRC Youth Director, and Youth InterACTION team, Fort Worth Prairie Park

Maxine & Vishal at Fort Worth Prairie Park

Kaiden and Spring Flowers, Fort Worth Prairie Park

Fort Worth Prairie Park

Former wilderness, Turner Falls, Oklahoma, just north of the Texas border

Turner Falls, OK

GPRC Fort Worth Headquarters

Fort Worth Prairie Park