Idaho Servant Adventures gets $65K in grants

WALLACE — Lutherhaven Ministries announced it has received two major grants to expand their impact in the Silver Valley. A $40,000 grant from the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation of Boise will support the Shoshone Mountain Retreat Dining Hall renovation project, and a $25,000 grant from Innovia Foundation of Spokane to purchase vehicles to safely transport materials and volunteers to service sites.

Headquartered in Coeur d’Alene, Lutherhaven Ministries owns and operates two sites: Camp Lutherhaven on Lake Coeur d’Alene and Shoshone Mountain Retreat on the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. Shoshone Mountain Retreat, 35 acres surrounded by 3 1/2 million acres of National Forest, was purchased from the U.S. Forest Service in 2009 after being leased by Lutherhaven Ministries since 1998. Idaho Servant Adventures is the primary program operated out of that facility.

Piloted in 2007, ISA provides weeklong service and outreach programs that engage youth and adults in community service and outdoor adventure. ISA targets health and hope for the elderly, disabled and needy by improving housing, and targets kids and teens through outreach events and leadership training. Teams of teens from around the nation and their adult mentors use Shoshone Mountain Retreat as their base for a week of community service — lending a helping hand to underserved kids, youth, adults, families and communities. Teens get outdoors; build meaningful relationships with peers and adult mentors; and serve others in simple, significant ways transferable to back home.

In the past decade, more than 5,000 participants from across the country have served more than 75,000 hours in a variety of ways. In the nine weeks of summer 2017, 690 dedicated young people from 15 states worked at 96 service sites and performed more than 13,800 hours of service bringing needed energy, passion, organization and “elbow grease” to meet need after need in the Silver Valley. The 2018 season is in full swing and on track to match 2017 statistics.

The Shoshone Chow House renovation — supported by Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation — is a capital project with direct programmatic ties, providing a functional space for cooking and eating to fuel volunteers. The camp’s current sleeping capacity does not match the facility’s kitchen and dining space, with bed space for 140 and dining space for just 100. The project eliminates the need to feed volunteers outdoors, addressing food handling, accessibility, weather and guest comfort concerns. The grant pays for foundation work for the new dining hall, doubling the size of the existing facility and providing the platform for volunteers and staff to gather, give thanks, share stories and raise new walls to serve generations of campers and servants to come.

Thanks to the Innovia Foundation, the camp’s fleet of 15-passenger vans will be retired. The current vehicles are older, with increasing maintenance and repair costs, and mounting evidence shows 15-passenger vans can be less safe than traditional vehicles. The Innovia grant puts new, safe wheels under 500 or more young servants each summer.

“With functional kitchen and dining space and safe, reliable vehicles, Idaho Servant Adventures can significantly increase the number of hours teens and adult servants spend addressing community needs,” ISA Director Clint Kunze said. “We are so grateful to the Laura Moore Cunningham and Innovia foundations for sharing our vision for the future and so generously supporting it.”

For more than 50 years, the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation has been dedicated to continuing the Moore and Bettis families’ legacy of “advancing the great State of Idaho.”

Innovia Foundation (formerly Inland Northwest Community Foundation) connects donor generosity to the region’s most pressing causes and collaborates with community partners to drive transformation across 20 counties in Eastern Washington and North Idaho.