Dear Summer Mentor Team,

I hope this email finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy! Our program staff is hard at work preparing for our upcoming summer season, which is set to begin with Mentor Training on May 17th. While it’s certainly not our ideal scenario, in accordance with the state of Montana and CDC guidelines, BYEP programs will continue to operate via a remote model until further notice.  While our goal is to be in-person with our participants and volunteers  as soon as possible, the safety of our kids, volunteers, and our community is our top priority. Still, we can assure you that the second it’s safe to resume in-person programming, BYEP will be heading straight to the woods to make up on all the adventures we’ve missed so far!

While BYEP staff prepares our new building for our eventual reopening (it’s going to be amazing!), we do ask that there are no visitors to BYEP at this time. We’re so excited to share the new BYEP space with the amazing community that helped us build it, but to protect the investment we’ve made together it’s clear that the best course of action is to hold off on opening the BYEP office until we can say with full confidence that doing so won’t move our community backwards in our response to COVID-19. Most notably, this policy includes our brand new skatepark - we are beyond excited to share this resource with our community, but for the time being the skate park will be off limits to the public. We’ll be opening it up the moment it’s clear to do so, but we appreciate your patience in the meantime. 

Before we can move to Phase 2 of offering in-person programming, we will be conducting weekly evaluations of the COVID-19 situation and keep you informed. As a rule, our decision to reopen will be influenced directly by CDC and Gallatin County Health Department recommendations. We’re all chomping at the bit to get things back to normal, but it’s of paramount importance that BYEP continues to make decisions in the best interest of our kids, staff, volunteers, and community. 

If you have any questions about our reopening guidelines, please contact your Program Manager or our Program Director at 406-551-9660. Looking forward to seeing you all soon and thank you for choosing to mentor for BYEP.

Take good care,

Katie