"Give Because You Love Us And We're Awesome!" Funding Drive

The Crow River Trail Guards was born in 1992 out of a love for the outdoors and a desire to foster stewardship and environmental awareness.  It has evolved into an effective and successful program that gets kids out of bed and into the outdoors with friends and positive mentors, and teaches them to not just love and respect the outdoors, but to also love and respect themselves--because it all starts right there.

We offer most of our trips and outings at no cost to kids who earn the required points by working at the Crow River Nature Park, a twelve-acre city-owned land parcel along the river in Paynesville, MN.  Providing these opportunities at no cost opens them to kids from nearly any socio-economic background, and we indeed introduce many kids to wonderful experiences they would have otherwise missed in their lives.

And no one knows who would have been able to pay, and who would not have.  They enjoy these outings as equals, and bring all their incredible stories to the mix as we bond and grow in the great outdoors.

We also organize and execute our annual "My Room" Project each winter.  We pick a desrving young Trail Guard with a bedroom "in need" and do a renovation, complete with rewiring, flooring or carpet, wall patching, window repair, painting, window dressings, closet lighting, sometimes closet building, furniture, bedding...you get the picture!  This is a very rewarding project each year, and this is the kind of thing you are supporting when you click on that "donate" button.  We have done 16 My Room projects to date.

Visit our website a www.trailguards.org to see a list of the adventures we offer.  Visit the Trail Guard Twitter and Facebook pages (links on the website) to see pictures and videos of our outings.

 Please be as generous as you can--and THANK YOU!