MILLEDGEVILLE — One-hundred-and-twenty-three Baldwin County students recently made their way to Wild Adventures Theme Park for a trip of a lifetime but it turns out just getting there was an adventure itself. 

Alicia Jenkins is an education coordinator for Oak Hill Middle School’s YES program, which is funded by the Georgia Department of Education and is an extension of the Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers. Jenkins and her colleagues had spent the summer teaching the program’s Summer Adventure campers lessons surrounding this year’s theme — “The Wild Adventures of YES.”

Along with a variety of STEAM and other learning activities, they had focused on ideas such as helping students think outside of the box to all of the possibilities awaiting them.

That’s where the idea of a Wild Adventures field trip came into play.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Jenkins said the camps hadn’t been able to go on any major field trips, and coordinators were hopeful this would give the students an opportunity to see real-life examples of the things they had spent the summer learning about. They would have chances to see science in action through the physics of roller coasters or by observing different animal habitats. 

And since this year’s camp included an entrepreneurship aspect, they could explore future career possibilities. The trip, which was set to be funded by 21st Century, would be a first for many of the students.

“A lot of the kids had not been to any type of amusement park at all and this wasn’t going to cost them anything, so a lot of the kids that don’t get to participate due to funds were going to get a chance to participate and see a lot of the stuff that we had learned about upfront,” Jenkins said. “It wasn’t going to be something they just read in a book or somebody told them about or they watched on TV. They were actually going to get to experience it firsthand.”

Jenkins and her co-workers took care of all prerequisites for the trip and talked back and forth with the Wild Adventures representatives in their planning. Everything appeared to be set.

A few days before the trip, Jenkins received an email from Wild Adventures stating the park doesn’t normally accept a purchase order for the tickets.

“That’s really the only way we could pay for the tickets was through a purchase order,” Jenkins said. “I don’t know of any school district that would pay straight up beforehand for tickets.”

Jenkins was concerned she would have to cancel the trip.

“I just couldn’t settle with that,” she said. “I couldn’t accept that. I couldn’t look at the kids and tell them they were not going.”

The next option was to reach out to the community for pledges to sponsor student tickets.

“It was a long shot but I had to make sure that I had exhausted every possible avenue before I canceled the trip because the kids had really been looking forward to it,” she said. “We had based our entire program around it.”

Jenkins reached out to a couple of local businesses; she met with her colleagues to discuss ideas like car washes and barbecue plate sales; she even emailed U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock to inquire about the acceptance of purchase orders. Ultimately, the program needed to come up with about $4,000. So, at about 2:30 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, Jenkins made a plea to the community on social media, and then she and her fellow coordinators said a prayer.

With uncertainty looming, she left the post and waited.

It was about 5 o’clock the next morning when Jenkins awoke to a pleasant surprise.

She discovered the program had received $5,000 in pledges for the trip.

“Friday morning, we got the word that we did have enough money and that the community definitely came out and they all pledged that we would have the money to take the kids to Wild Adventures.”

Then, Jenkins got a call back from Wild Adventures after lunch stating the park would accept the purchase order. It had been a misunderstanding, she said.

“The YES Program provides fantastic educational opportunities for students and we were very happy to assist in that,” Adam Floyd, senior marketing and sales manager with Wild Adventures Theme Park, said in a statement. “During their visit to Wild Adventures, the students experienced hands-on learning that takes classroom concepts and puts them into a ‘real world’ context. That kind of learning fosters deeper understanding of concepts and sparks imaginations.”

Though in the end it wasn’t needed, Jenkins and her colleagues certainly saw that the community had their back. And in the end, 123 students and a few adults experienced a wonderful trip.

“They did everything,” Jenkins said.

The students explored habitats, ate a buffet lunch, played in the water park, rode roller coasters and talked to employees for ideas about their own career paths. The kids paid for nothing. Apart from what was already funded, Sinclair Oconee Homes paid for souvenir cups that could be refilled throughout the day, and a couple of local churches sponsored two cabanas to help students beat the heat.

For Jenkins, seeing the way the community supported the kids was second only to seeing the students take it all in.

“The kids had a phenomenal time,” Jenkins said. “It was a tremendous support from the community to see these kids get to go and experience that. … I think it meant a lot to the kids that we said we were going to do this and we actually went through and we did it. … Just to see their faces as they ran around the park, that was enough for me.”