- [Interviewer] Sitting on the chairlift, the inevitable question.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Small talk's weird, right?

Nobody asks you cool stuff like what's your favorite animal?

What's your favorite album, right?

You never get like the cool things.

It's always like, where are you from?

Where do you work?

- [Interviewee] When I tell people what I do, I never have to explain it.

- I'll mention that I work for WinterKids and a lot of times they don't know what we do.

- Either they know about us and you just have this person telling you how fantastic the place that you work is.

The other side of that is they've never heard of WinterKids before.

So you give them that little chairlift elevator pitch of, we're a nonprofit organization and we try to get kids out and active during the winter months.

- And it's always rewarding to share the work that we do here at WinterKids with them.

- I've been in a local grocery store wearing my WinterKids jacket and people come up to me and say, I was a WinterKid.

I knew WinterKids when I was in school, or I did the passport.

That's amazing.

- Everybody immediately jumps into saying either I was a winter kid or my kids were WinterKids.

- Everybody always responds positively.

We need kids off there computer screens and their TV screens in the winter.

We need kids out more in the winter.

- I really had no idea I would still be at WinterKids 20 years later, I volunteered.

I got hooked by the mission and I'm thrilled to have been given all these opportunities to learn so many new things, to reach so many kids, to share my passion for winter and teachers and education with this whole Maine community.

(bright music) - Don't throw it away.

- No, of course not.

- My name is Carla Marcus.

I'm the founder and first long-term executive director of WinterKids.

I was working in the ski industry.

I was a ski patroller at Sugarloaf, and I then decided to leave Sugarloaf, so I went to Ski Maine and I said, may I help you?

And the executive director of Ski Maine said, actually, I need some help and I'd like some help.

I wanna start something that is being done in Utah called the 5th Grade Passport, but I have no money and I can offer you an office and pay for your telephone and all that, but I really can't pay you, but I wanna start this.

And I said, I'm on it.

I started the 5th Grade Passport, mimicked what was being done in Utah, which was three days of free skiing at every ski area and all kinds of benefits for siblings and parents, all kinds of discounts and all these other things just for 5th graders.

So getting to your next question of something like why I went into the education aspect, was that the next question?

At this point, there were a number of states that had started a 5th Grade Passport program, and I put on a national conference, so many states came to Maine and we had a three day conference in Portland, Maine at our office.

And it was really exciting and I thought, oh my god, this is it.

This is where, at that point, it was called Ski Maine for Kids.

And I said, this is where Ski Maine for Kids needs to go.

We are free skiing discounts for parents and children.

Getting them outside is great.

- [Interviewer] Can you talk about bringing Marian onto the team and what that did for the education program?

- Oh.

No.

I can't.

I can't.

Marian Doyle is the heart and the essence of WinterKids.

Marian Doyle is everything, she is where it's at.

I couldn't have done anything without Marian and she's still here and we're so lucky.

- How's my hair?

Okay?

I'm Marian Doyle, education director.

- [Interviewer] How long have you been here?

- Oh my goodness.

I have been at WinterKids for 20 years.

So when I started at WinterKids, I was the project coordinator and I was asked to go to schools and deliver our active academics workshops.

That meant lugging a large bag of snowshoes, actually multiple bags of snowshoes to a classroom, bringing the curriculum guide that we had at the time called the Outdoor Learning Curriculum.

I implemented the lesson in the classroom and then we took the kids outside to reinforce it with an outdoor active time on snowshoes.

- We had math lessons that were done outside and we had science lessons and art lessons and just getting the kids to run around outside and love winter and experiential learning was the key to better learning.

So we started what we called then the Outdoor Learning Curriculum and that just exploded because the teachers all became our allies.

They loved it.

- It was so much fun.

Kids loved it, teachers loved it, and it was a great experience.

I'm passionate about teachers and education and bringing materials to teachers that are useful, not just dropping a book in a classroom and it's collecting dust on a shelf.

Why I love WinterKids' Learn Outside Guide so much is because it is easy to implement.

It is aligned to education standards, it is active outdoor academics.

In the late 90s, we developed a program called Welcome to Winter.

- Welcome to Winter, and all the immigrants and refugees who came to Maine who had never seen winter.

And we were working in the schools and we developed an awareness about these refugees and immigrants.

And so many of them came from Sub-Saharan Africa.

- And they're very unfamiliar with winter and winter conditions, the cold, what to do, how to survive.

But also how to have fun.

- So we started at least two, one in Portland and one in Lewiston-Auburn, programs to introduce kids.

We called it Welcome to Winter because it was new for them.

There was also the Multilingual Multicultural Center that we went and met with the people there and they were so happy to help us understand better the cultural differences, understand how to reach people.

Then we had these great festivities and the kids came and they tried sledding and maybe snowshoeing and other things.

And I don't know what kind of long-term difference it's ever made, but surely being exposed to the fun of winter had to make an impact.

- Welcome to Winter grew from a small backyard classroom activity, introducing kids and fun things, fun winter things to a small group of Somalian immigrants to a huge festival at Payson Park that brought Adventure Bound and other many partners to celebrate winter.

(bright music) - It's about WinterKids.

Right.

- It's about the children.

My name is Julie Mulkern.

I was executive director of WinterKids from 2011 to 2024.

When I started at WinterKids back in 2009, I believe I started as the development director for the organization.

And at that time there were only two other employees, so it was a very different place then.

It was a lot of fun to get to learn the organization through development work.

And I learned a lot about Carla Marcus, the founder, and Greg Sweetser, who was the Ski Maine executive director.

And at that time, we had the WinterKids Passport and we had an Outdoor Learning Curriculum, but the organization was in a stage where there was a lot of sort of throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks.

And I think I say that as a compliment in that it was just in the early stages of the organization and we were testing sort of what worked and becoming executive director was great.

I loved the staff.

It was a fun transition going from coworker to executive director.

It was an exciting time to sort of work with Marian and at the time, Adam McDonald, who was our project coordinator to see what WinterKids could be.

The Passport is an incredible program for Maine kids.

And back in the day, we used to make three separate booklets for three different grades.

And it really was the focal point of WinterKids in terms of the number of kids we were reaching and how we were reaching them.

- The WinterKids Passport began as a physical book that kids could hold.

They pasted their picture in the front cover.

It was to sort of replicate an actual international passport.

Kids would bring it to the mountain, the area would tear out a coupon.

It was a whole lot of paper, a whole lot of tactile product.

- And we realized that as time went on, it would be much easier and much more efficient to make it a mobile app.

- [Narrator] Recycle the passport and download the brand new WinterKids app.

For kids of all ages.

- It's now a digital product on the phone.

I'm really passionate about bringing programs to the schools, about spending the money to develop these programs.

Really meaningful, useful material that the kids and teachers can enjoy.

We didn't start with very much money when I first started at WinterKids, in fact, there was very little money spent on programming at all.

We were reaching barely 300 kids with that school program, bringing the snowshoes, now we're reaching 10,000 kids with just our winter games.

It's amazing.

And really the reason for that and the influx of cash really, we owe largely to the Downhill 24.

- I remember when I became executive director going out to Peaks Island and we had a couple of new board members and one of the first things a brand new board member said, which was Kevin Rosenberg from Mount Abram, why don't we do a 24 hour ski fundraiser?

And I felt sick at the time, wondering how with three staff in the middle of the winter, we'd pull off a fundraiser like that.

- It was very daunting, very daunting.

There were just a handful of us, three of us working here.

The board thought that this 24 hour event would be a great fundraiser for WinterKids.

- The Downhill 24 is one of the, if not the most unique winter fundraiser in Maine.

And I think it has been so successful because it's a perfect mix of skiers living the mission while you're fundraising and being able to involve anyone from age five to 90.

Probably was the oldest person that ever participated.

- In year one, I think we raised $45,000.

We worked our tail off, but it was something in the first three years, we raised $150,000 over at Mount Abram.

We outgrew Mount Abram.

We needed a built-in community where there was much more housing, that the success of the event was growing exponentially.

- [Announcer] You ready to join WinterKids?

- In that first year, I was standing on the beach with our executive director at the time, Julie, and she and I were standing at the beach when they flipped the signs over and we had raised over $150,000.

The money finally matched the work that we were doing.

It was really impactful.

- It changed the course of the organization in that having a fundraiser that raises nearly a million dollars in 24 hours, it allowed us to reach thousands more kids per year in schools with the Passport, with special programs for kids to do Learn to Ski days, expanding Welcome to Winter.

So the opportunities became much broader for us once we had that steady income of such a magical event.

The Guide to Outdoor Active Learning, which is now the WinterKids Learn Outside Guide is an incredible way for teachers, whether WinterKids staff is there or not, to get their kids outside and active during the winter months.

And in my mind, with the time spent outside getting less and less for kids during the school day and having kids in my own, I see that the Learn Outside Guide is an incredible way for teachers to get kids outside.

And I think that the winning part of the Guide for WinterKids is that it's not complicated.

The lessons have been very well thought out.

Marian put an incredible amount of work in working with a consultant to make sure that the lessons really work for both preschool teachers and elementary teachers.

And they don't ask for a lot in return in terms of, you know, guidelines to be in the program.

And I think that works well.

Teachers are already, you know, overrun with things to do.

And so the Learn Outside Guide makes it super easy and Marian and Tom are there all along the way to help them.

It's wonderful.

The WinterKids Challenge when it was created was a wonderful idea because we realized, Marian actually realized that there were far more kids in schools that we could be reaching.

And school is certainly the best way to reach kids.

When we transitioned the WinterKids Challenge to the Winter Games, what that meant essentially is that we were asking teachers to sort of become the trainers in what we were doing with the Guide to Outdoor Active Learning.

And so, funny enough, Marian and I had many conversations with me saying, are you sure the teachers know we're not coming?

- Once we start the Winter Games, they're hearing from us regularly.

I'm in contact with the lead teachers every week.

We need to know what they're doing, where they're at, and they have questions.

We're always here, we actually answer the phone.

We're here to help them, support them and be available so that they will succeed 'cause their success is our success.

- And of course, as you know, you can see today, it has grown strides and is an incredible program for Maine kids in all 16 counties.

I think that the Winter Games is one of the single best ways that WinterKids was changed to focus more on kids that need us versus just the demand for outdoor winter sports.

When we decided to morph the WinterKids Challenge into the Winter Games, it was a Winter Olympic year and it was very exciting for WinterKids because Seth Westcott was participating in the Olympics.

He was already a two time gold medalist.

We really took advantage of that with Seth as our spokesperson.

And he at that time was an incredible role model for children and certainly people that were trying to excel not only in winter sports, but just, you know, increasing their self-esteem and getting outside and having fun.

And so that was a really, really great way to launch the Winter Games in 2000, in 2018.

Sorry.

- To stay at a job for 20 years, who knew I would never have expected I'd still be here.

I started as a volunteer.

I was given a position, a part-time position as project coordinator.

I got the opportunity to see the difference that WinterKids can make in schools, in communities to help children.

I love kids, I love winter, I love teachers to bring useful materials into schools and early child care centers and help develop that love of winter for everybody.

So when you asked what's kept me at WinterKids for 20 years, every season it's something new, whether it's learning what an EPS file is or learning how to become an avatar in an online digital training or sitting right here in front of this camera so I can do a documentary for WinterKids.

Tom has been a win for WinterKids.

Tom puts the win in WinterKids for sure.

We are so grateful for that.

I particularly am so grateful, I've been a one woman show in the program department, so it was terrific in 2022 when Tom came onboard, he's got the education experience, he's got a steady, solid demeanor.

And when all else is going chaotic in the office, Tom keeps us on track.

- I'm Tom Long, I'm the programs and environmental sustainability manager.

Teachers work really hard and they have a lot thrown at them and you constantly have politicians and superintendents with ideas of what need to be done in schools and teachers just have to figure it out.

The great thing about WinterKids is they wanna get kids out and active and rather than just saying, hey, teachers make it happen, they got together the Learn Outside Guide.

And so you get to hand teachers this book and has all these activities so that you can take the kids outside.

It's tied to the learning results.

It's not putting the onus on them, it's helping the teachers because if you help the people who help kids, you're gonna get better results.

So I was hired at the end of the summer in 2022.

I had been familiar with WinterKids, both as a shop owner that teamed up with WinterKids on activities, but also just as a volunteer.

So I knew about most of their programs, not from a, you know, an employee side but from the other side.

So coming in you'd be nervous to any job.

I was nervous, but at least I felt comfortable with the organization and most of the programs.

I knew I had the Welcome to Winter coming up that I had to work on.

I knew I had the Winter Games coming up and then all of a sudden I was told that we were making a training module for the Learn Outside Guide.

And I had never done anything like this before.

I'd never written a script for this.

I'd spent, you know, 15 years as a teacher on the other side of that, I wanted to make sure that we did the teachers a service instead of just sitting there staring at their laptop for an hour.

I wanted to make it a little bit more dynamic, a little more excitable.

So then I found out that we were gonna be avatars.

(upbeat music) I'm like, great, we get to be a cartoon character.

I get to make a training the way that I wish they were made when I was a teacher.

Marian and I work extremely well together and I wanted to use that to our advantage.

It's hard to just sit and listen to one person talk for an hour.

So I knew that Marian and I could have a great dynamic in this training module if I did the dialogue out so that the two of us could be talking back and forth.

There would be a switch, there'd be a little bit change of energy.

- There's a lot of fun to be had during our winter season.

- Welcome to this WinterKids Online training.

Are you ready?

I also knew that we couldn't have a training module where we're asking teachers to get kids outside and moving and have them sit and stare at a screen for an hour.

So we threw in a couple of motion moments where all of a sudden in between lessons, we made the teachers get up.

I had just envisioned in my head, teachers are usually doing work, you know, after school or at home.

So I imagine them either sitting at home with their families or sitting after school and all of a sudden like standing up and doing like jumping jacks and snowflake jumps and spins in the middle of this hour training session that they were doing.

So I wanted to make sure that it was fun.

I wanted to make sure it was all those things that maybe I wish I had seen in the trainings that I participated in.

And I was really new working here at the time and all of a sudden the first rendition of it comes and Marian comes out, hi, I'm Marian.

- Hello, I'm Marian.

- And then I come out my little cartoon character, hi, I'm Tom and I'm on skis.

And despite being new to the place, I'm like, oh no, that can't fly.

I'm not gonna be skiing in the training module.

So the company that we worked with, they were great to work with, they very quickly turned it into a snowboarder and everything was saved and fine.

And I'm Tom, we'll be your conductors through this online training.

Here, we'll explore the elementary edition of the WinterKids Learn Outside Guide.

I was like, wait, I don't wanna rock the boat, but you know I am not gonna be a skier in this thing.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hi, my name is Josh Harrington.

I'm the family programs and outreach manager at WinterKids.

I started in October of 2018.

I run the WinterKids app, the WinterKids Passport, WinterKids Adventure Fund and help out with on mountain components of WinterKids events.

- [Attendee] We call you that guy from WinterKids.

- Yes, I am officially known as that guy from WinterKids.

It is the Instagram handle.

Hey, what's going on?

It's Josh from WinterKids.

It's Josh from WinterKids, Josh here from WinterKids, Josh here from WinterKids, Josh here at WinterKids.

So our programming reaches a bunch of kids that need our service.

We are also seeing the opposite side of that spectrum at our fundraising events.

Kids who have had these opportunities are really pulling together to make sure all kids have the opportunity to be outside.

And that's really rewarding, not just for them but for us.

And it's great to have them on our team.

Family Days are a part of the WinterKids Passport.

It's date specific events where the whole family gets a great deal to go skiing or Nordic skiing or ice skating, not just a free junior ticket.

You get discounted parents, discounted sibling tickets, sometimes discounted rentals.

Those are very popular.

We've been hosting 15 of those for the last few winters and we'll see anywhere from 50 to 250 people come out for those.

It's a great way to meet other WinterKids families using the WinterKids Passport.

We get to meet the folks that we serve and hear some of the great stories that they have about using our program.

We definitely have kids that come to every Family Day.

Families will travel from mountain to mountain to get the best deal possible and I am personally there at each of those and it's so fun to see them show up.

They always come over and say hi, see what swag I'm giving away at the table.

They'll come in and tell me how their day's going, tell me what trails they ski on.

It just reminds me of me, myself, when I was a kid.

How excited I got from being out there in the mountain and seeing it firsthand is really incredible.

Giving kids an opportunity to be outside and active in the wintertime is really meaningful to me personally because having grown up with that experience of being outside on the mountain, it's one of the first times a kid gets to really express themselves as an individual.

They don't have necessarily their parents skiing with 'em all day.

They get a little bit of independence, they learn how to be their own person and the creativity that they can express on the mountain is unmatched.

You're always out there skiing by yourself, even if you're with people, your ski style or your riding style is your unique style.

And that is one of the coolest things about watching kids ski.

- As the program manager, one of the other programs that I oversee is Welcome to Winter, which has been a fun program that I was able to participate in as a snowboard shop owner.

And it was really great to be able to take that over and continue it.

It's such a fantastic event.

As also the environmental sustainability manager, I'm realizing that winters are changing, right?

What winter used to be and what winter is now is an evolving thing and we can't always count on there being snow in January, let's say for an event.

So with the WinterKids moving the event to a resort, a partnering resort, in fact, we knew that they could make snow and we could schedule the event and we could have our Welcome to Winter event no matter what because we'd be guaranteed snow.

Winter sports tend to be a big investment and there are ways to find deals, there's ways to get gear, but first you really need to know if you enjoy it or not before jumping through those hoops and finding the materials you need to do it.

And so by offering people the opportunity to try skiing, try snowboarding, try Nordic skiing, try snowshoeing, sledding, having these opportunities, seeing what you like, give it a try, then you can make the dedication to try to get the equipment and then continue on the habit.

It is incredible to see kids on the magic carpet having such an incredible time, takes you right back to when you were learning how to ski and snowboard.

You're seeing a new love and a new passion growing in them and you see it on the snowshoes and it's so great to be able to give kids these opportunities and you hope that they will pass it on to their kids again someday.

- I'm not keeping my shoulders.

You guys are great coaches.

My name is Courtney Holub.

I'm the executive director of WinterKids.

When I saw the job posted for the executive director at WinterKids, I was immediately drawn to it.

I had spent over 10 years coaching at an adaptive ski school based out of Loon Mountain in New Hampshire.

There are so many things that are fun about being at WinterKids.

A, there's the team, and B, they're the kids, at D24, I got to have epic dance parties, I got to tell jokes, I got to play games, and I got to remind kids and adults that there is joy in life and that there's fun to be had and we should celebrate.

My experience with this team has been nothing short of being completely in awe of them.

This team is five people in addition to myself and we are reaching nearly 9% of Maine school-aged kids.

There's a wealth of knowledge, there's an immense respect and there's an incredible trust that the team has.

I know that we would not be as successful as we are without them or without this makeup.

- This is a great place to work.

Everybody's so awesome and we all have the same thing in mind.

We care about each other and we care about our greater community and we care about the health of all.

- [Crew] You're doing great.

You're doing really great.

Take a breath, shoulders back.

- Here we go.

My name is Jillian Rich.

I am currently the vice president of the Board of Directors for WinterKids.

WinterKids represents to me an opportunity for all children.

I think one of the wonderful things that this organization does is it provides a chance for all kids to get outside and enjoy the winter.

Whether that means skiing or sledding or just going for a hike and understanding how to be outside in the winter.

During my time with the WinterKids staff, my eyes were opened to all of the work that they do day in and day out to make this organization run and touch thousands of children every single day and every single season.

There is this small but mighty staff that is behind WinterKids and the work they do every day is so impactful that it creates joy for every child.

If you attend any WinterKids event, whether it's Winter Games, Downhill 24 or watching any of the children do the family days, you will see joy on every single kid's face and the families that are there.

And that is a true testament to the work that this organization does day in and day out.

- But instilling healthy habits in children early on, is that word habit is key to me, right?

I mean, this isn't a one time fleeting moment, this is, is getting kids thinking about something that becomes habitual.

That means it'll become a fabric of who they are, what they do.

And it it almost should ideally become something they don't have to think about.

And I think when you get to that level of evolution in yourself as a human and thinking, you stop thinking about what I need to do to either eat well, to play well, to think, to engage.

And we all know that these are all critical pieces to not just being a healthy kid, but being a healthy adult too later in life.

So I love that we're trying to build healthy habits early on.

I think that's absolutely critical and it's super fun to be part of.

- What's next for WinterKids is I would love to see us reach more kids, get up to serving 25% of school aged kids in Maine and truly be recognized for the pivotal and kind of pilot program we have going on here.

I think our program is really unique and it blends outdoor education and learning with outdoor recreation.

And that's something I haven't seen replicated in another model, done in such a scale as what we're doing here.

And I would really like to see how we're able to reach other communities in Maine that we're not serving as strongly right now, and build our connections and our trust in those communities and be able to engage more kids who don't have the opportunity to go outside like so many of us have had in the winter.

- For the next generation of WinterKids, I am so excited to see where this organization can go throughout the entire state of Maine and the growth that we can see for all the kids.

There are so many children in Maine that don't understand or know how to get outside and enjoy winter safely and with joy.

And there is so much magic in being able to play outside in the winter and especially when there's snow.

- So what am I most excited about the future?

What's interesting, you know, we're here celebrating 25 years and I think sometimes when you hear 25 years, that's a long time, right?

And sometimes maybe that would bring a bring about, you know, fatigue or anything along those lines.

And that couldn't be farther from the truth.

We have so much momentum going on with WinterKids right now with our brand recognition and new ideas popping up and new partnerships.

And really what I'm super excited about in the future is strengthening these partnerships with educators and with community partners across the entire state of Maine.

I just see tremendous opportunity and I'm really, really looking forward to being part of it.

- WinterKids matters more now than ever because we have to get kids outside and away from tablets and screens.

There is so much that can happen outside that builds confidence in the kids and they can explore and it's okay to be bored and then learn how to be a kid out there every day.

- Man, I mean, life is hard every time you turn around, there's just these macro headwinds that are, that are kind of, you know, constantly facing us.

You think about, you know, inflation and what it's done in terms of driving costs up.

So I love the idea that WinterKids is trying to combat that and give experiences at a discounted cost.

I think, you know, the proliferation of technology is incredible, but also can be mind numbing in a lot of ways.

And so I think, you know, our education programs, getting kids outside and really getting the heart rate up and experiencing fresh air and all those things that you can't get when you're sitting in the house are just uplifting and really magical moments that it's really hard to do candidly these days.

So I think just again, being a force of good, being, you know, that oppositional force, all those things that are against us and I'm, you know, excited and energized to be part of that and can't wait to push it even farther.

- When you create something like a baby or anything else, it's yours and it's in your heart and it's so deep in your heart and you want it to thrive and you want it to be a success and you never know what's going to happen.

But I don't wanna say I'm proud because that means that I can take ownership and I can't.

I'm just grateful that WinterKids is such a strong and thriving and important organization that's doing such good for people, not just in our state, but in other states too.

- I'm most proud to have brought the Winter Games to schools across the state of Maine reaching 10,000 kids and more year after year.

But quite honestly, what really is the most amazing thing is we're still a rock solid organization 25 years later.

- Working at WinterKids, I regularly think of the German term Freudenfreude which is to feel joy from seeing other people's joy.

And I think that the way that WinterKids does all the things that it does is because everybody that works here genuinely loves to see people experiencing joy.

- Happy 25th anniversary WinterKids.

- Happy 25th anniversary WinterKids.

- Happy 25th anniversary WinterKids.

- Happy 25th anniversary WinterKids.

- Happy 25th anniversary WinterKids.

- Happy 25th anniversary WinterKids.

- Happy 25th anniversary WinterKids, here's to 25 more.

- I can't believe it's 25 years.

I just, I can't even believe it.

And happy 25th anniversary WinterKids.

You completely have nailed it all.

(bright music)