Our Foundation
The Children’s ARK mission is embodied by the selfless commitment of our founding couple. In 1994, Eric and Jean Ann West boldly changed the course of their lives as they stepped toward their retirement. In their late 40s, the couple left family, friends, and successful careers in California to build loving homes for adolescent boys and girls in Colorado. They opened their doors and their hearts to the abused and the neglected.
The Children’s ARK started small. With only one site for boys, they took on a few employees to help run the campus, and help care for the boys they started with. Throughout the years, they eventually grew to open a girls’ facility, build bigger and better cabins, and eventually build the Resource Center which houses the administrative offices and school. Currently, Children’s ARK has three facilities – Ute Pass facility (boys), Green Mountain Falls facility (girls), and an Emancipation House for boys in Pueblo. We can successfully serve 80-100 children in residential and several more with outpatient, mentoring or monitoring services. We also offer several community-based programs throughout Pueblo, Green Mountains Falls, Manitou Springs, and Woodland Park.
Commitment to the child is a gift that we must hold. Our commitment is to place the child in a state where he or she no longer needs our gifts. We teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. We help them and supervise them so that they may soon not need our help and supervision. We must passionately push for the movement when we become superfluous. Our reward is when we can say, “He or She no longer needs us.”
As an employee of the Children’s ARK, you will strive to become highly trained, highly motivated, and embrace the moral code of service, integrity, and honor for the future of our children. They embrace the call to serve our young, our abused, our neglected, our hurting children. The professional employee understands that integrity and honor are not just words, a slogan, or a catchy phrase. No, integrity and honor are actions which, when modeled for our children, form the building blocks of character, maturity, and citizenship.
Our employees should be involved in the lives of our children. Participating in recreation, teaching social etiquette, managing the milieu, and overseeing the activities of our children, are only a fraction of the whole. To be involved is defined by the heart. It is the spontaneous self-sacrifice and the free gift of care, concern and mentoring. Involvement is the unabridged act of love.
Children’s ARK defines success as the pursuit of vision, service, integrity and honor. Although difficult to quantify, the successful young man or young woman faces the stresses and the challenges of life. He or she learns to brave the storm, in order to be capable of greatness over the rest of their life.
