As an inner-city kid, Leon McNeil knows first-hand the negative environment some children are exposed to and the lack of outdoor opportunities afforded to them.

He and his wife Leticia McNeil started City Kids Adventures (CKA) 26 years ago to introduce youth to a change in environment and outdoor adventures away from the challenging life of the inner city. But CKA goes beyond just outdoor activities as McNeil tries to also teach the children about "life lessons."

"It was a way to get inner-city kids out of the city," McNeil told Kinute. "Big-time change of environment with the hopes of teaching them a lot of life lessons along the way, because Mother Nature has a way of doing that. And it kind of started as, you know, just as a middle school project, and it grew from there. And so it was just a way to introduce a change in their environment."

The group's motto is "Hard Work Has Many Rewards!”; and so far, countless kids have been impacted by being a part of CKA.

As a middle school teacher and coach on the west side of San Antonio, McNeil said it was a "very challenging environment, to say the least, but typical in a city environment, and the kids were very unengaged and unmotivated by anything other than trouble -- typical gangs, nonproductive behavior, just all the classic things that you see in the inner-city environment."

After playing football in college and coaching, he was confused by the lack of motivation in the kids. 

"They would rather be nonproductive, engage in nonproductive behavior," he said. 

He said he made a pact with several young athletes when they were in 7th grade that if they played sports and continued to play, the end of the school year would bring about an opportunity. 

He had 33 kids finish out of 35 and took them on a camping trip on the Guadalupe River in San Antonio.

McNeil said he was the "classic inner-city kid, just like everyone else" and came from a "messed up home life." But his high school football coaches took care of him, and he was given the opportunity to play college football.

"And they gave me one profound piece of advice, which I live my life today, and that is: keep working hard, son, and the rest will take care of itself," McNeil said. 

He applied that rule to every aspect of his life, including relationships, work and education and "all the things that you do as a human being. I applied that little philosophy of working hard, and the rest will take care of itself. And that's what I've done. And so in doing that, they gave me a chance to go to college and to get a football scholarship at Abilene Christian University. And that basically was the catalyst to change my life."

What McNeil experienced at Abilene was life-altering. 

"I got to see humanity in a different way," McNeil recalled. "It was unlike the inner-city environment that I grew up in where everybody was, you know, everybody was very, very uninspiring, very, very unmotivated, very, very harsh...nonproductive environment. And when I got to college, I saw a different side of humanity, and I saw the goodness in people."

He said his way of giving back to the coaches who helped him is paying it forward.

"And so my way of thanking my coaches and giving back was to help as many kids that were in my situation as possible to see that there's another side of life. And once you see that, that inspiration creates aspiration; and once you got inspiration, you can aspire to change the world and move mountains, but it starts with inspiration," McNeil said. "And a lot of kids in an inner-city environment have very, very little inspiration. And you see, they say you see the same thing over and over and over again, all day long. They see all the negative aspects of life. And so they start to think that that's the way life is. You do that, you start to lose hope that you can do something different."

CKA aims to give hope and inspiration to its members, and kids are given the opportunity to explore another world through experiencing the outdoors.

CKA not only gives outdoor adventures, but with it the important values of responsibility, worth ethic, discipline, and high moral character. It has a year-round commitment to all its members, Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine reported. McNeil was an ambassador of TPW Foundation two years ago and its We Will Not Be Tamed initiative, which raises awareness and encourages Texas residents to get involved in the conservation of places and wild animals.

McNeil is still actively involved with TPWD as it has been involved with CKA from its beginning, and the organization also provides opportunities for the children to go camping and kayaking and participate in other activities.

Getting inner city kids to enjoy the great outdoors and also teach them life lessons along the way is what CKA strives for. Photo courtesy of Leon McNeil.

McNeil's own life was influenced by the recruiter who convinced him to attend Abilene, who introduced him to fishing, and another ACU employee who took him on fishing trips and introduced him to hunting with bird dogs. The employee told McNeil when he graduated, he would be given a dog; and in 1992, McNeil was given an English pointer puppy--his own bird dog.

McNeil told Kinute that John Rabidu, the bird-dog trainer, was an important figure in his life who introduced him to the great outdoors. McNeil would travel with Rabidu during the summers to North Dakota and its wide-open spaces.

"And it gave me a lot of time to really, really take a look at my life, to reflect on where I was in life, the things I was doing....and I got a profound appreciation for wide-open spaces, the emptiness, the nothingness, the greatest creations of Mother Nature. I would say he would have had to have been the person that, really opened my eyes to the power of the outdoors because it's a healing spot," McNeil recalled.  "And so he also showed me a lot of life lessons that connected with the outdoors, and again, that profound information helped me translate that into more and more inner-city kids like myself, not understanding that and realizing that more and more need to experience this and understand what this is all about, so getting them out and breaking down those barriers. It just took off from there."

McNeil said he does not believe inner-city kids spend enough time outdoors; and while technology is a good thing, it "should never replace human interaction. That's what Mother Nature gives you a chance to do: is to get out and interact on a human level, stay connected on a human level."

McNeil said while society continues to push the "connectivity" narrative, "we're disconnecting our kids, and it's hurting our kids." 

CKA offers a range of activities such as hunting, fishing, camping and kayaking, to name a few. McNeil said his group of kids do everything outdoors.

"We like to refer to ourselves as an outdoor mentoring program or outdoor adventures program on steroids," McNeil said and pointed out that while a majority of the kids are minority, they don't like to refer to them as such. "We don't like to use that term –– we're just kids like everybody else.

"But the media and everybody else would say, 'Oh, look these minority kids are doing all these wonderful things.' No, we're doing things that every other kid in America should be doing. If you're given the opportunity, and your skin color has nothing to do with it other than the fact that that's something foreign to your environment, we get that. So, again, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about you having to go skiing in Telluride for the first time. Let's talk about you going on an 11-mile kayaking (trip) down the Rio Grande River and Big Bend, let's talk about going offshore fishing and catching your first Yellowfin tuna 140 miles out. Those are the things that we talk about that all kids should be doing."

When asked what people should know about CKA that has not been reported, McNeil said, "my wife just nailed it...the one thing that is interesting...is that a lot of people have a misconception that our organization is for inner-city kids. It's not just inner-city kids. It's for all demographics of kids, kids that come from the inner city, kids that come from high-income, single parent, dual parent."

While the majority of the kids are from the inner city, "at the end of the day, when you get out in the outdoors, you're just a kid just like everybody else. It doesn't matter your socioeconomic status; it doesn't matter your race, your religion – you're a kid."

"All kids matter in the outdoors," McNeil said.

McNeil said he just was back from the first offshore fishing trip of the season, and he surveyed the kids he took on what they liked or disliked about the trip.

"Every single kid unanimously said that they enjoyed getting back out and getting in the wide-open ocean and being free of all the things that are present in the inner city.

"Some of the things that they share, the impact is lifelong," McNeil said.

One ranch owner, Frates Seeligson, who has gone on hunting expeditions with CKA and McNeil, told Land.com that "'nature deficit disorder' is a real thing. I’ve read that the average kid in America spends 4 to 6 minutes outdoors each day. That’s about how long it takes you to get out of your parked car and into a grocery store. We need to change that narrative.”

McNeil said CKA aims to teach kids to "become comfortable with the uncomfortable," and that is one of his favorite sayings coined from a friend Bruce Bowen.

When asked how CKA has impacted his own life, McNeil responded, "it is my life...it's my family and our lives, with my son, my wife and I...this is what we were put on Earth to do." He and his wife are both teachers, and his adventures are "just an extension of our lives."

"We understand the importance of giving the next generation an opportunity to be the best they can be, so, yeah, it's our life," he said.

One of CKA's adventures to South Padre Island, Texas. Photo courtesy of Leon McNeil.

All the outdoor adventures have been meaningful to him and the kids, but he remembers one trip over an Easter break. They arrived at the location at 3 a.m., slept in their van, and the kids went on an 11-mile kayaking trip down the Rio Grande River. When they returned, they still had to set up camp and not one of them complained.

Another story he recalled was a young man who was part of the program for a few years who did not want to hunt because he was against guns, which McNeil believed he learned in school. He told the boy's mother it wasn't about the killing aspect but about hunting. After the boy attended the hunter's class, where he learned firearm safety, the boy went on a deer hunt. 

The boy, who was normally reserved, has now become extremely confident and a leader in helping young kids in the program overcome their apprehensions.

"He realized the power of hunting, and he understands it's not about killing. And now he's taking that meat home to his family, and they're eating deer meat... And he's now empowered to be able to provide for his family," McNeil said.

McNeil said his long-term goal for CKA is "to continue to do what we do until my wife and I can no longer breathe. My son will ultimately be in a position where someday he will surround himself with a group of people that are still connected to our organization and have come up in our organization and ... continue to give kids mentoring and outdoor opportunities and have impact. To be able to have an organization like ours represented in another city from our ideology would be a blessing, an absolute blessing."

For more information on City Kids Adventures, call 210-336-9833, email cka@idworld.net, visit Citykidsadventures.org or find them on Instagram @citykidsadventures.