As the executive director of Waope, a non-profit organization based in Brightwood that helps kids, Nunpa has been able to impact up to 400 kids each year since the organization formed 14 years ago.

Last week he received a letter from a troubled girl that went through the organization, reporting she is sober, starting college and had just moved into her dorm. She noted that Woape made the biggest difference in her life.

“You get letters like that, it just propels you forward,” Nunpa said. “This is
why we’re doing it.”

Woape, run out of Nunpa’s Brightwood home for the past 12 years, is about to
move to a new location in Sandy, a location called the Ant Farm that can lead
to many more young lives helped and impacted.

Woape (meaning “hope” in the Lakota language) began in 1997, then called
RedWind, to provide occupation and community based teaching to youth.
Nunpa, an occupational therapist by trade, sees it as a way to get kids
engaged in everything that can provide a meaningful life, including work and
recreation.

“Ant Farm is creating healthy lifestyles,” Nunpa said. “If we can help you
identify choices, both in work and play, I think we’ll be doing what we want to
accomplish.”

The organization has worked with a number of groups that deal with youths,
including DePaul Treatment Center, Multnomah County and Catherine Freer
Wilderness Therapy Programs, bringing kids to the Mountain to perform
different work, such as constructing trails, gaining experience and building
community. The programs are open to all youth, not just high-risk kids.

“We really want to build community that doesn’t segregate people,” Nunpa
said.

Approximately two years ago, the organization decided to move to a more
visible location. In July 2010, demolition work started at the 39140 Proctor
Blvd. location, including kids involved in Woape programming.

“We recognized that if we really want to access and connect to the local
youth, we needed to do it in a visible space that the community could
recognize,” Nunpa said. “In a home front Brightwood location, for years we’ve
been there but nobody knows we’re there.”

The new 3,700-square-foot location includes a market café that will be open
to the public and offer drinks and food (and provide internship opportunities
for program participants), a cultural and arts center featuring youth artwork,
a learning center with 13 computers and a kitchen to help teach kids various
skills. The arts center and learning centers debut at a Nov. 4 grade opening,
while the kitchen and café will be opened at a later date.

“We started really with nothing, and there’s just been really good community
spirit and a lot of people really want to see this happen,” Nunpa said. “That’s
what we want, a community connection.”

Even though the center is still in progress, the Ant Farm programming is up
and running. Nunpa estimates up to 175 kids contacting the organization
since last December, and he’s been putting them to work building mountain
bike trails, and operating a small garden by Suburban Ford in Sandy to benefit
the Sandy Action Center and more.

“Now it’s really cool because ... the youth we’re seeing right now, they’re
referring themselves,” said Nunpa, who noted the garden has produced more
than 1,000 pounds of food on the way to a goal of a ton.

“That’s ultimately where you want to be: kids come in because they want to
come in.

“We started the programs, it’s a little cart before the horse, but in some ways,
it’s just what we needed to do.”

Funding for the non-profit has come from grants, contracts with agencies to
perform work such as building the bike trails, fee service work and private
donations.

But the new center will offer the opportunity to diversify their funding with
income from the café.

Plans are also underway to double the size of the garden and to add a
farmer’s market booth, also to be run by the program’s youth. Nunpa added
that they will continue to give the Sandy Action Center “all the food they
need.”

This summer, 23 of the program’s participants have worked on mountain bike
trails on Sandy Ridge, clearing trails, removing organic material and rock,
back sloping areas and fine tuning berms and slopes.

“I find it really cool to see once I’ve started doing a trail and then looking out
afterward and seeing how it all came out to be,” said Becky Jones, 16, from
Boring, noting her work with Ant Farm provided her first job. Jones also
worked at the community garden this summer and plans on becoming a sign
language interpreter.

Sandy’s Austin Varin, 19, found out about Ant Farm at Sandy High School.
Varin, who worked a construction job last summer, is considering a career in
fire fighting and found the trail construction work offered some good training.
“I guess I’m getting better at the Pulaski (a tool with a hoe on one end and an
axe on the other), which would be helpful for fire fighting,” he said.

And the trails they create have made a positive impression on the mountain
biking community.

Ethan Furniss, a Youth Trail crew manager, noted that the trails are built
specifically for mountain biking, rather than being adopted from a logging or
hiking trail.

“That creates a little bit different feel or experience,” Furniss said. “The trails
here are extremely well-received.”

And the students are encouraged to enjoy the fruits of their labor, as part of a
healthy lifestyle.

“They’re doing some hard work and they really take a lot of pride in it,” Nunpa
said. “We not only want them to work, we want them to learn to ride the
bikes and enjoy them.”

For more information, visit antfarm-international.com or woape.com.