VISIONS high school volunteers have lived and worked in the South Central region in native communities since 1995. Every summer is unique and every program memorable. The people of Tetlin, our current home base, will welcome you with warmth and generosity as every VISIONS group has been welcomed by the Athabascan people.

Your home will be a community center in which you and your summer leaders (staffers) live together. There are gender-separate spaces, either separate classrooms or opposite ends of the hall or center, and privacy spaces for guys and gals. VISIONS provides burly air mattresses; you bring a pillow, twin sheets, and a sleeping bag. You’ll have a cubby for your personal stuff and handy access to bathrooms and showers. We do laundry once a week in Tok, the major “hub” small town 90 miles west of the Canada Border. Tok also is where we go for supplies, ice cream and other treats.

Our home base this summer is in Tetlin village in South Central Alaska (about three hours east of Fairbanks). Tetlin lies along the Tetlin River, between Tetlin Lake and the Tanana River, about 20 miles southeast of Tok. It is inside the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge. As such, this is an extraordinary opportunity to live in one of the most traditional of Alaska native villages, certainly in one of the most beautiful natural surroundings.

Five days a week, after breakfast, you will head to your chosen community service project with your work team and one or two staffers. We typically work five or six hours, taking short breaks and at least one hour for lunch. A rotating group of three or four students and one leader stays back from projects each day for "home base" crew. The crew tidies up and cleans our living space, collects the mail, prepares lunch, and later helps our dinner cook prepare the meal and cleans up afterwards. The home base crew might also join in a work crew later in the day.

After work there’s always time to hang-out before dinner, take a shower, visit with community folks, play baseball or other games with local youth. Sometimes, we take short close-to-home hikes or head into Tok. In the evenings we may learn traditional crafts such as beading, drumming, woodcarving from villagers, or we might join a steam bath with our friends. Several evenings each week after dinner, we set aside time to meet as a group of volunteers. This is a slow-down time to speak and listen to each other, share our reactions to the day or iron out occasional issues together. You’ll have the opportunity to call home once a week.

In Alaska the sun never really sets in July! It gets about as dark as early dusk in the lower 48 states. We’ll follow the rhythms of Alaskans in summer, which means our days our long and that there will be plenty of opportunities to explore and learn about Alaska Athabascan culture and to mix and mingle with the community. We’ll join community picnics (dining on fresh salmon, moose or caribou), go to a fish wheel by the river to watch people collect the day’s catch, visit a friend who has a smoke house and sled dogs, trek to an old village site to see wildlife.

The weekends are all about exploration. You will go backpacking for three days and two nights into wilderness areas, such as Lost Creek in the Wrangell Mountains or Bone Creek in the Mentasta Mountains. There will be an ice climbing excursion with St. Elias Alpine Guides on the Root Glacier that we mix with a hike and visits to the historic copper mining towns of McCarthy and Kennicott. The wildlife is always on view: moose, caribou, bald eagles and other bird, and maybe even bears---from a good, long safe distance.