On Friday, March 28, the Cheyenne River Youth Project® will host its fifth annual Family Day festival in Eagle Butte. To commemorate the not-for-profit organization’s ongoing 25th anniversary celebration, CRYP staff and volunteers will kick off the free public festivities at the site of its original youth center on Main Street.
At 4:30 p.m., CRYP Executive Director Julie Garreau will say a few words to the gathered crowd at the “old Main,” after which the group will march to the youth project’s current campus on East Lincoln Street. Guests will enjoy an evening meal in the Keya Cafe at 5 p.m., and from 6 to 8 p.m., the Cokata Wiconi gymnasium will be home to some serious family fun.
“We’re going to have Pictionary, face painting and a variety of field-day events like an egg-and-spoon race, a bean-bag toss and ‘free-throw in three minutes,’” said Tammy Eagle Hunter, CRYP’s youth programs director. “We’re also very excited to offer a new activity, which will allow families to build their own miniature greenhouses.”
Before they go home, CRYP is encouraging all Family Day guests to add their hand prints and their family names to a large paper mural.
“Each year, we have a Family Mural Project that is part of Family Day,” Eagle Hunter explained. “We hang a large roll of art paper in the lobby, and we ask families to choose their own spots and draw something to represent their families. This year, we thought hand prints and names would be a fun way to say, ‘We are all part of CRYP.’”
Previous Family Days have drawn anywhere from 150 to 200 people, according to Garreau, and she said she’s looking forward to this special opportunity to acknowledge the organization’s quarter-century of service on the Cheyenne River reservation.
“Not only is this a chance for Cheyenne River families to spend an evening together, enjoying each other’s company, laughing and making memories, it’s an opportunity to open our doors to community members who may not be as familiar with our facilities, who we are and what we do,” Garreau said. “We’ll provide tours and information about our signature programs, services and activities, and we’ll have plenty of staff and volunteers on hand to answer questions.”
Family Day was the brainchild of a former CRYP volunteer, designed to forge and reinforce connections between the youth project and the larger community. After all, CRYP is, at its heart, a grassroots community organization.
“That’s not a common story in Indian country,” Garreau noted. “We’ve been here for a quarter century, we’re on our second generation of kids, and we’re 100-percent grassroots,” Garreau said. “We’re homegrown, and that fact that our organization comes from within the Cheyenne River community really does make us unique.
“That’s why it’s so important to us that our kids’ parents, grandparents and other family members feel that CRYP belongs to them, too,” she continued. “Family Day has been a wonderful way to facilitate that sense of belonging, and this year, it’s also going to be a very special way of celebrating the last 25 years… and the beginning of the next 25.”
CRYP was founded in 1988, making its first home in a former bar on Eagle Butte’s Main Street. Known affectionately as “The Main,” the organization dedicated itself to providing reservation youth with a safe, nurturing, positive place to learn, create, play and enjoy healthy meals and snacks, giving those most at risk a real opportunity to develop into healthy, well-rounded individuals.
In 1999, the organization was able to open a new 4,500-square-foot facility on East Lincoln Street; still known as The Main, it caters to children ages 4 to 12. Then, in 2006, CRYP opened the doors to its 26,000-square-foot Cokata Wiconi teen center, which serves youth ages 13 to 19. The youth project also incorporates the 2-acre, naturally grown, pesticide-free Winyan Toka Win garden (1999); and the reservation-wide Family Services program (2002), which provides much-needed household supplies, heat-matching and home-improvement assistance, as well as popular distributions such as the long-running Christmas Toy Drive.
“We’ve grown so much since that little bar on Main Street 25 years ago,” Garreau reflected. “It can seem like a lot has changed, but CRYP remains true to its roots. We’re here to take care of our local youth, to teach them to be proud of themselves and their identity; to easy the daily burdens on their families; and to support the growth of self-sufficient, vibrant communities across Cheyenne River.”
The Cheyenne River Youth Project, founded in 1988, is a grassroots, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing the youth of the Cheyenne River reservation with access to a vibrant and secure future through a wide variety of culturally sensitive and enduring programs, projects and facilities that ensure strong, self-sufficient families and communities. To stay up to date on the latest CRYP news and events, follow the youth project on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.