Even during “normal” times, putting together a teen tour is no easy task. You have to book flights, hotels, buses and attractions. Hire a catering staff, counselors, and a trip leader. Make all arrangements for Shabbos (whether at a hotel or home hospitality there will be complications). You have to market the trip, recruit participants and try to make the program as affordable as possible, while still staying on budget. In the case of Aryeh Adventures, we also have to raise significant funding for scholarships. You might be thinking “Really? Asking people for money so a bunch of teens get to go to incredible places I’ve never been to?” Well, it’s not that simple.

Aryeh Adventures is a 501(c)3 charity that fully integrates teens with special needs alongside mainstream peers. Rooming, meals, activities—everything is done side by side and all participants are equal campers. There are no salaries in our organization either: Our board volunteers its time putting the trips together. Even the counselors volunteer as well (though we do give them $200 in spending money to cover any expenses that might arise while traveling). We also only take 30 participants per trip. That’s not good business. On a teen tour you want to fill every seat on that bus to maximize profits. We make sure that on our trips our participants aren’t overwhelmed by there being too large of a group, or by feeling that they have no personal space on a filled-to-the-max bus. In addition, raising a child with special needs can cost as much as four times more than a mainstreamed child, and you have parents who simply can’t afford a summer experience like Aryeh Adventures. So yes, we do need to raise significant scholarship funds and thankfully most of that funding was covered by Three Pillars Recruiting this year. But there are other challenges we did not anticipate…

Many of the arrangements for teen tours are made close to a year in advance. (We’ve already started the groundwork for our 2023 trip: Aryeh West.) A year ago, as the world was opening back up, tourist locales were trying to ramp up business and we were able to get shockingly cheap flights to Alaska. So, after no trip in 2020, and a mini five-day adventure last summer, we aimed to be back full blast with Aryeh Alaska for 2022.

We effectively lost thousands of dollars in 2020 as most of our deposits were turned into credits, half of which we’ve still been unable to use. Therefore, we decided to hedge our bets and cautiously started making reservation last fall. And then inflation came along—prices started to rise…and rise…and rise. Gas prices went up…and up…and up. We were lucky enough to get an excellent group rate on our flights before these massive increases, but the airline could only give us 30 seats at those prices. With staff we’d be 40 people. We tend not to book our staff on our flights until the spring, as our college-age counselors are generally unable to fully commit until then, and this year the flights we had original purchased had tripled in price. Then we got an email from the bus company—we would have to pay a hefty fuel surcharge. The rental vehicle for our catering team also doubled in price from initial estimates. We also decided to book an extra room in some locales just in case, chas v’shalom, we had a positive COVID case and had to isolate a participant.

We briefly considered extending these extra costs to the parents but opted against it. However, we were going to be over budget. So, we either had to go out and raise more money—which no one on our board especially enjoys—or get creative. We realized the catering crew could actually go on the bus for longer stretches and use Ubers locally if needed. We got a Walmart+ account and got our massive food orders delivered to our locations for free—less need for the catering crew to drive. We rearranged part of our schedule and opted to stay at a hotel right next to some of our planned attractions. The few hundred more we’d be paying for being in a more “prime” area would also allow us not to use the now extra-expensive coach bus for a portion of the trip, saving thousands. Two of our staff members decided to stay out West after the trip, enabling us to book them much cheaper flights home. We spoke with the National Park Service and were now able to enter all National Parks for free (there were five parks on this year’s trip). We already knew that there was something called the All Access Pass that enables individuals with special needs to enter all NPS sites for free along with three friends or family members. However, we’d chosen to avoid getting those passes as it could be embarrassing for some of our participants who strive not to be seen as different. We explained our situation to one of the rangers and (after getting proper documentation from us) arranged for our wonderful trip leader, Justin Spiro, to pick-up and hold the cards for the eligible participants. No one embarrassed. Back on budget.

We’ve been lucky enough to have run 15 Aryeh trips. At the orientation for each program we always tell parents that something will go wrong: Flights might get delayed or cancelled, the weather won’t cooperate, traffic might be insufferable or you might get thrown off schedule because someone recognizes one of the stars of Game of Thrones on a hike and now you have to wait until each camper has taken their pictures with him. We also always tell the parents that we have a fantastic staff; they can improvise and adapt to whatever comes their way on the trip…and, as we learned in 2022, all year round.

Aryeh Adventures is a volunteer-based charity established in memory of Ari (Edward) Lichtschein, HY”D, 9/11/01. Its board members include Rabbi Captain Moshe Grussgott, Justin Spiro, Aaron Lichtschein and Lana and Yoni Glatt.

By Yoni Glatt