The Cheyenne River Youth Project has welcomed children ages 4 to 12 since we opened our doors to "The Main" in 1988, long before the opening of our Cokata Wiconi teen center. Since the beginning, we’ve understood how important it is to reach our children while they’re...
In the four-plus years since we launched our teen internship program, we’ve seen three types of participants: teens who complete one or two internships in different tracks, teens who complete all four tracks, and teens who fall in love with one particular internship...
When Juell Twite was a young child growing up in Eagle Butte, she wanted to join the other kids at CRYP’s The Main youth center for 4- to 12-year-olds. Sadly, health issues kept her close to home — until one summer day, when she was a teenager. “I was sitting at home...
More than a decade ago, a Cheyenne River teen named Anthony Potter was a regular around CRYP’s “The Main” youth center, offering volunteer service wherever and whenever it was needed. Fast forward to 2017, and quite a bit has changed: For starters, the youth project...
Welcome back to our “Main Edition” of the CRYP Hall of Fame! This month, we’d like to introduce you to Dexter Hawk Eagle, who started attending youth programming at The Main this summer. Dexter is 7 years old, and he’s a second-grader at Cheyenne-Eagle Butte...
Cheyenne River’s young people immersed themselves in art during CRYP’s RedCan invitational graffiti jam this year. From the First Peoples’ Fund’s Rolling Rez Arts activities to the many ready-and-waiting walls in the Waniyetu Wowapi (Winter Count) Art Park, teens and...
While the Cheyenne River Youth Project has provided programming and facilities for 13- to 18-year-olds since we opened our Cokata Wiconi (Center of Life) teen center in 2006, we’ve been serving our reservation’s 4- to 12-year-olds since the very beginning. They...
At the Cheyenne River Youth Project, we’ve worked hard over the years to develop a programming mix that allows us to reach as many young people as we can, and then develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with particular individuals over time. For example, we...
Although we at the Cheyenne River Youth Project are immensely proud of our teen internship program and our burgeoning arts initiatives, we’ll never forget our roots. CRYP got its start nearly 30 years ago in a little youth center for 4- to 12-year-olds, and to this...
When the Cheyenne River Youth Project designed its innovative teen internship program, it created four distinct internship areas to appeal to a diverse range of interests. Yet staff members are discovering that many teens choose to participate in all of them. Once the...