Rush Creek’s staff includes a group of high-potential young adults from urban backgrounds who work as paid seasonal interns. They leave the city and their normal lives behind and come to live and work in the mountains. Not only do they learn a specific trade, they are also able to live in a supportive community and enjoy outdoor experiences that challenge, motivate and inspire them.
Our commitment to our youth program stems from two central beliefs:
- Supportive employment can help young people build momentum in their lives and realize their fullest potential
- The outdoors in general, and places like Yosemite
in particular, should be accessible to everyone
Our Youth Program is central to what we do at Rush Creek, and we’re proud to have a “double-bottom line” enterprise with both a business and a social mission.
Our work is more rewarding as a result of our Youth Program, and our guests can feel good knowing that, by staying with us, they are helping young people to gain experience that they would not otherwise have access to.
Hear what our General Manager, Joe J., has to say about our program as well as our exciting new partnership with Columbia College, providing on-the-job training for a new Hospitality Degree program:
The Youth Program at Rush Creek is modeled after the many years of success we’ve had with the Youth Program at our sister property, the Evergreen Lodge. For potential youth interns and others who may be interested, this Evergreen Lodge video provides more information from the Evergreen’s perspective.
You can also learn more by reading the following articles written in the New York Times and Fortune Small Business.
For those interested in applying for an internship, you can fill out an application here.
In designing and running our program, we’ve partnered with Juma Ventures, an award-winning San Francisco Bay Area non-profit organization. Juma is a nationwide leader in combining employment and programmatic support to help young people. Juma provides invaluable expertise in helping us to deliver the highest impact program possible.
As a result of our social mission, Rush Creek joins the Evergreen as a certified B Corporation, a group of companies, including Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, and over 1,600 others worldwide, that “use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems”.