Spring Appeal 2025
Dear Friends,
Education is one of the most common struggles families face, leading them to contact us for assistance. Their kids are often facing significant struggles with their schooling and most are at least one semester behind, and many are a year or more behind their peers. To address this concern, we provide on-campus schooling for the kids throughout the year, including during the summer months. This is something that a lot of the kids struggle with because summer months are typically “fun” and school tends to be viewed as less so.
In order to provide opportunities for the students to learn non-traditional skills, we offer a week of leadership development and “fun” through a process called “The Challenges.” This involves multiple, day-long competitions where each of the kids is placed onto a team that requires them work alongside each other to navigate a multitude of activities that include different skillsets. While the kids mostly view this as being purely competitive and fun, there is a hidden purpose to these tasks that will hopefully teach them valuable life skills along the way.
A major focus of the challenges is to help the kids navigate working relationships and the teamwork that is necessary to accomplish a common goal. While this can be true of any team environment, it quickly becomes necessary in work environments where different personalities must come together and complement each other for a shared purpose or goal. Often during the first few days of challenges, the kids begin to struggle with navigating these interpersonal relationships and conflict develops as a result. After each day of competition, the group comes together with several adults to debrief their experiences of the day and navigate any conflict that arose during the process.
In doing this, we hope to give them the necessary skills to have a healthy dialogue when they run into similar conflicts in adulthood, especially in a workplace setting. We are quickly approaching this year’s challenges and are looking forward to not only the fun aspects and the memories that will last for years to come, but also the valuable lessons that we will be able to communicate to the kids that will hopefully last just as long.
Since many of the students in our school setting require qualified supervision and unique educational instruction over an extended time, and The Ranches receives no government funding, financial resources have become increasingly important. We are extremely grateful that you and many other New Mexicans have seen the value of the services we provide to our struggling students, and your continued support is very important. We thank you for your commitment to these young people and your willingness to invest in their future.
Sincerely,
Mikela Kull – President
