Vamos partners with schools to take kids aged 5 to 18 outdoors for climbing, snowboarding, biking, backpacking and other programs.
This summer, before Bellingham-based nonprofit Vamos Outdoor Project’s migrant program, employees were training and practicing new protocols in case of an ICE raid. Walter Topete, one of the people in charge of programming and development, compared them to school shooter drills and described it as “dystopian.”
“We had an event in April where there was a big raid in the community a few days before,” he said. “Instead of canceling, we came up with a really comprehensive safety plan, and the truth is we had a huge turnout. We had a bigger turnout than the two years before. People needed to celebrate.”
Vamos Outdoors Project, which works to get “Latine, multilingual, migrant and newcomer” kids outdoors in Skagit and Whatcom counties, has changed its safety protocol in response to immigration raids. Additional support for families is also needed due to the increase of ICE activity in Skagit and Whatcom counties leading to parents being deported or detained.
Vamos partners with schools to take school-aged kids from 5 to 18 for free, to be outside or active through various programs including indoor and outdoor climbing, snowboarding, biking, backpacking and more.
Getting family involvement is crucial to the success of Vamos; that is why the organization partners with another Bellingham nonprofit, Immigrant Resources and Immediate Support, known as IRIS.
IRIS primarily serves immigrant women and children who are survivors of violence. Its website states it responds to the “urgent and unmet needs” of immigrants in Whatcom, Skagit and Snohomish counties. It acts as liaison to connect immigrants with needed resources through partnerships.
Growing up fast
“Right now we’re dealing with a lot of young people, and usually we don’t; because the parents are getting detained,” said Norma Suarez Govea, executive director of IRIS. These children are “faced with growing up super-fast, because now they’re in charge of their siblings and in charge of helping their mom figure out how to pay for bills. They’re just scared, and that’s why we push for them to seek counseling.”
Latine families can have a hard time communicating with school teachers and staff, which prevents parents from actively participating in their children’s academic journey, according to Vamos’ website.
Although children take part in the hikes and climbs, Vamos is committed to including parents and families. “It’s a matter of giving somebody a space where they feel they can belong, and that has exponentially positive benefits all around their whole world,” Topete said. “Because we also work with parents, we also end up engaging parents in cool ways, we do workshops for parents, where they come by and they can make their own community.”
Topete said his Mexican parents were isolated from the surrounding community when he was growing up.
With Vamos, “I get to see parents come together, and I get to see that community being built, that is an important piece of why our programs are inclusive, because it’s not just the kids that are getting care and love and inclusion, it’s the whole family,” Topete said.
The work has resulted in students being more attentive and engaged in school and making more friends, according to Topete. One student, whose father was recently detained by ICE, was doing a climbing program with Vamos. He would often say that he missed his dad and that school was challenging. His mom then kept him home from the program out of worry that she would get deported or detained and her child would come home to an empty home.
After talking with staff, she let him return. “She expressed a lot of gratitude that she finally had the confidence to let him go to the program,” Topete said. “Because he’s been struggling in school, not engaging. That’s a child that feels like the system has already failed him.”
Topete learned that after one week in the climbing program the boy was engaging more in classes and doing much better in school.
“People in our community are scared to go out, but once they do, the returns are positive and beneficial. I think the mother also enjoyed having their child with somebody they could trust. And I know it was probably nerve-racking for her, but at the very least we were able to give the child a really nice experience,” he said.
Better reports from school are not the only marker for success, but they are one way for Vamos to measure its impact.
“(Kids) may not know the language super well, they might be getting bullied, they’re seeing a lot of racism toward immigrants, maybe their parents got deported or detained,” Topete said. “These kids find a really comfortable safe place with us. They go home and they tell their parents how good it feels.”
An outdoor way of life
Outdoor activities have proven to improve one’s mental health and build community according to a study on the effects of outdoor activities and outdoor environments for fitness and mental health.
“As an immigrant, I felt I had to be incredibly successful, be a doctor or an engineer, or I would be a contract person, where I work long hours, little pay, like my dad,” Topete said. “Outdoor experiences introduced this element of career pathways that didn’t become super apparent while I was in college.”
Barriers to outdoor experiences can be both financial and social. “If you don’t have access to a car, if you don’t have money for gas or insurance, then you won’t ever go. That is the biggest thing we miss when we’re trying to be inclusive,” Topete said. And it can be hard to feel welcome in a space that hasn’t always been friendly. Vamos goes beyond invitations to the outdoors to creating a welcoming space particularly for its participants, Topete said.
That is why Vamos provides transportation to their excursions and calls the participants parent or guardian every week.
In 2024 alone, Vamos served 1,500 students through 22 programs and six school districts.
In addition, the Outdoor Center at Western Washington University partnered with the Latine Student Union for a hike recently at Horseshoe Bend, past Glacier up the Mount Baker Highway.
“We provide all the necessary gear, risk management and transportation. This quarter we’ve been working with the Latine Student Union, we’ve also actually been working with a group called Latino men in higher education,” said Dieder Maas, the excursions coordinator at the Outdoor Center.
“One of the coolest things about it is being outside together with your community. And this trip to Horseshoe Bend with the Latine Student Union is actually one of the highest sign up or participation level trips we’ve ever done,” with 25 participants, said Maas.
— By Mars Wetzbarger
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Students lead in celebrations of Hispanic heritage,” Oct. 27, 2025
• “Community responds to ramping ICE arrests,” Feb. 13, 2025
• “Farmworkers to return to Olympia to lobby for rights,” Jan. 17, 2025
• “Teen anxiety is on the decline in Northwest Washington, but still high,” Jan. 16, 2025
• “Impacts of immigration realities, policy weighed by panel,” Oct. 23, 2024