STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Far+Wise has renamed its Center for Career Exploration the Cimino Center for Career Exploration after the Cimino family gifted the program with what executive director Laura Lewis calls “a transformational gift.”

“They made a multi-year, very significant pledge that rose to the level of a naming pledge,” said Lewis. “The Cimino family has always wanted to see a trade and professional program here, and so it was a perfect aligning. They, like me, feel that college is not for everybody so it is a shared vision.”

The Cimino Center for Career Exploration, which is entering its third summer, is now a year-round program offering teenagers the opportunity to learn about a variety of trades, including snowmaking at Sun Valley Resort, automotive work and firefighting.

Youngsters attending camps have gone on to work for Sun Valley Resort and the Limelight Hotel in the hospitality business. And seven of those who attended a caregiving camp have applied for internships with The Senior Connection.

Applicants who are selected will be given scholarships to get CNA or certified nursing assistant certification at the College of Southern Idaho, said Lewis, who will turn over the leadership of Far+Wise to former Sun Valley Community School educator Sam Herrick in June.

Students who got involved with the Lewis Scholars kindergarten through 12th grade program  when they were in first grade will cycle into sixth grade in middle school this fall.

Far+Wise is adding another afterschool kindergarten cohort at Bellevue Elementary School next fall. The kindergarten already has 23 applicants for 20 spots and it’s expected there will be more.

“If we had another space, we would probably do a second cohort,” said Lewis.

That means 140 students will be enrolled this fall in the Far+Wise afterschool program that offers academic support and enrichment programming.

“We’ll have programs at Hemingway, Hailey and Bellevue schools. They do community service projects and outdoor education through out close partnership with Idaho Base camp,” Lewis said.

Far+Wise is entering its fourth summer collaborating with the YMCA, Blaine County School District, Lee Pesky Foundation on a collaborative summer school program known as SummerBridge.

Ten Far+Wise staff support Blaine County School District teachers in the program that serves 275 to 300 students

All these programs will be supported by the Aug. 15 benefit “Soaring to Success,” which will feature a gala dinner and auction at The Argyros.

This year’s celebration will have as its featured speaker Alicia Moreland Capuia, a community psychiatrist who took part in the first I Have a Dream program that Far+Wise’s original benefactor Ken Lewis set up in Portland, Ore.

Capilla, now a Harvard professor of psychiatry, has started a hospital in Angola and a trauma-informed treatment at McLean Hospital. She is currently studying how to break cycles of violence and trauma in youth.

“She’s brilliant and feels that programs like ours are transformational,” said Lewis. “She will talk about the transformation I Have a Dream made in her life and about how programs like ours can be transformational in many of our students’ lives.”

In fact, students from the initial class of 45 students to take part in the I Have a Dream Foundation-Idaho program that eventually became Far+Wise have done beautifully in college, said Lewis.

“Devin is studying international studies a Middlebury, Eduardo’s at a culinary institute… We have another student studying mechanical engineering at Santa Clara University in California….”