Summer Update 6-17-2026

Summer time is here and we’re just loving the sunshine, perfect temps, and

opportunities to spend time outside with friends. It’s been so fun these past weeks to celebrate

our seniors and prepare for all that summer means for Movement. This has been a big time of

transition for us.

May wrapped up with a picnic at the Que where we celebrated our seniors, gave them

their customary send off gift (a MVMNT Nalgene water bottle), and enjoyed food, fellowship

and a chance to reflect on all the adventures we undertook this school year. We will sure miss

this awesome crew of Seniors and will feel their absence as we celebrated 13 students!

This Spring we took a huge step in welcoming a new staff member at MVMNT. Kendra

Hilliard joined us as our program director this Spring and we couldn’t be more excited to have

her energy, enthusiasm, and experience. Kendra brings a wealth of outdoor experience and will

help us expand our outdoor programming and serve a wider community of students. We’ll look

forward to sharing more with you in the near future. In the meantime, what a joy to partner with

a like minded individual with a heart for the outdoors and students.

Summer means the start up of the MVMNT Summer Lunch program. This program has

grown dramatically over the few years that we’ve sponsored it. We’re excited about several

aspects of the program but especially love that we’re able to provide a job experience for 8

students this summer, able to provide free healthy meals to families (86,000+ last year!), and

that the program has continued to expand to serve even more folks this year. Preparing for

summer lunch has meant organizing and repurposing our space, much paperwork, and the

onboarding of a great team of supervisors, student employees, and volunteers to make it all

work.

We recently encountered some high winds and storm damage here in Somerset. Seeing

all the downed trees and damage we were motivated to see if we could help out in some way.

We gathered a group of students and connected with the folks at Somerset Lake to do a

service project. Jack Illar lead our group out on the trail and helped us to remove stumps, cut

back brush, eliminate invasive plants, and do what we can to improve this incredible

community resource. It was a hot humid day and our kids sledgehammered, dug, cut, and

sweated together to give back to the outdoor community.

As soon as I finish this blog post I’ll be on my way to prep bikes for a mountain bike trip

today. Each time we prepare for a trip I have to keep on pinching myself. I’m about to get to go

to our bike shop (!), load up several brand new bikes (!), and labor over which of several

awesome trail systems we’ll take kids to. What an incredible position to be in. I can confidently

say that we’re doing what we dreamed about when we started Movement several years ago.

Equipping kids with quality gear, quality people, and sharing the incredible beauty of our area

with them. I can’t wait for the inevitable ice cream cone at the end of our ride today and will be

happily scrubbing mud off of van seats as we get ready for our next adventure.

Thanks for all your support in helping us realize our vision. We’re only able to do what

we do because of the faithful support of our community. Thanks for partnering with us.

Spencer