Learning the Ropes: A Ropes Course Has Been Built Granite Hill

By Dylan Marsh
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
NEWPORT- A community use ropes course with the purpose of empowerment, emotional education, and especially fun, has been constructed at the Granite Hill School in Newport.

The facility was able to secure funding for the course after receiving a grant from the New Hampshire Empower Youth Program, which is geared toward helping middle and high school aged vulnerable youth. The Brattleboro, Vermont group High Five Adventure Learning Center worked to set up the ropes course at the 135 Elm Street facility.

Executive Director of Granite Hill School, as well as the Orion House, Danielle Paranto says that recreational activities such as these are directly in line with their mission. The management group Orion Prevention Information & Education, or OPIE, manages both Granite Hill School and the Orion House. While the group home and the school are separate entities, they both seek to help vulnerable and at-risk children.

The ropes course is the newest addition to the therapeutic recreation aspect of the property titled Sirius Fun. The name of which, much like the Orion House, is a play on the name of a constellation. With Sirius Fun, Paranto says their goals are to teach kids how to take healthy risks, teach self-confidence to try things, and the courage to go through it, as well as the social emotional learning. Paranto, whose education includes therapeutic recreation, has found that offering these healthy outlets and testing limits result in remarkable experiences for young people.

“We tend to talk to the kids ahead of time about setting goals. What is your goal for today? Do you want to try and get halfway? Do you want to get all the way up that? Then we work with them on the goal setting and working through it. From there we see an increase in self-determination and self-awareness,” said Paranto on the benefits of recreation in these settings.

The course, Paranto says, is not only for kids that are a part of these facilities. It is also intended to be a path to give back to the local communities. In the summer, they will be offering Sirius Fun Camp, a six-week camping program for kids typically ages 12-17. The camp will offer kayaking, orienteering, canoeing, frisbee golf, hiking, and rock climbing in addition to the new ropes course. The camp has a limited number of openings, but is free to campers, and the camp will also provide food each day to campers.

Orion House, the group home under OPIE’s management, got its start in the 1970’s. Initially started by a local reverend who lived in the home, he sought to take in and begin working with kids who were struggling in the town. The Orion House continues its mission to this day of helping young people, primarily with difficult home lives, by offering them full time housing.

Granite Hill School began when an educator, who had been associated with OPIE, took a job in the Newport School District. While there, he met with a student who needed some extra assistance and contacted the then Executive Director suggesting that he didn’t want to take the student out of the school district, but rather offer a more therapeutic setting for tutoring. The school now focuses on smaller setting classrooms with more individualized attention for the students.

Sirius Fun also intends to continue to expand on the nine acres of land that OPIE currently manages. In the future, they look to have roughly nine different ropes courses and look toward other potential positive and motivating outlets for not only the children that attend their facilities, but children in other local communities as well.

Currently the grounds also have a small farm on which children attending Granite Hill School use in their science programs in an effort to adopt real life experiences into the education process. A group of educators and students are also in the process of building a stone labyrinth near the ropes courses behind the school. Anyone interested in setting up time to use the ropes course in the future or attend the upcoming Sirius Fun Camp is invited to email [email protected].