The Dance Marathon executive board, comprised of Niles North and Niles West student leaders, has selected Rustic Falls Nature Camp as the chief charity beneficiary for 2012-2013. As secondary beneficiary, Dance Marathon is supporting the District 219 Foundation for Excellence.

Rustic Falls is a non-for-profit organization that offers respite to a variety of groups. In the past, Rustic Falls has provided at-risk youth, young people and adults with special needs or children suffering from cancer an oasis in which they can spend a restful time with their families. Rustic Falls offers its services and facilities to families and groups free of charge.

The Rustic Falls goal is to offer the families a safe, nurturing environment to enhance their lives through recreational and educational activities and by providing a wholesome, stress-free outdoor experience. Math teacher Tina Helms,a Dance Marathon’s sponsor, comments, “Rustic falls provides various groups with a chance to spend time together in an environment that is relaxing and full of adventures, while being away from hospitals and other routines at home.”

Rustic Falls was founded by Niles North parents Eric Lentz and Deanna Hallagan. They started building a camp lodge on Rustic Falls Road near Burlington, Wisc., in 2006. (Daughter Sarah Lentz graduated from North in 2012 while younger son Patrick started this year as a freshman.)

Thanks to the financial and manual labor support of many volunteers, Rustic Falls Nature Camp was ready to welcome its first group of campers in 2010 —  a group of boys from Marillac Social Center on Chicago’s West Side. Today the camp welcomes many charitable organizations and allows children to get away from their daily environment and spend time in the fresh air. Rustic Falls boasts a lodge, an almost-completed guest house, hiking trails and a pond. The camp borders an 80-acre wooded nature conservancy, so there is plenty of space for visitors to roam.

The Lentz family has dedicated nearly all of their free time over the past few years to building and organizing the camp.
The inspiration for the camp started when  Lentz was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and was given a limited time to live.

After being diagnosed, Lentz realized that he had to start achieving his dream of creating a camp for those in need. Rustic Falls got its start when Lentz purchased an old dairy farm, soon to be transformed into a restful refuge.

The lodge welcomes all kind of groups as well as volunteers during anytime of the year. Dance Marathon execs visited the camp three times this summer. “As volunteers, we made a new wood trail, and a fire pit, painted, cleaned the kitchen, mowed the lawn and cleaned out the barn, senior April Hernandez says.” One day we also got the opportunity to work with kids from the Marillac Center, which helps inner city kids. We got to play basketball, go on the slip and slide and moon bounce with them.”

“The students have been really excited and very helpful! They have seen how their hard work has already transformed the camp and are eager to continue helping,” Helms says.

The secondary beneficiary for Dance Marathon is the District 219 Foundation for Excellence. The Foundation for Excellence provides different resources that are outside the regular district budget to help provide a better education to Niles Township High Schools students. Last year, with support from students, clubs, sports teams, staff, local businesses and community members, DM raised nearly $85,000 for the Foundation and the 2011-12 chief beneficiary, Special Gifts Theater.

This year, all of the DM execs plan on raising more money to help both causes, and they plan on raising awareness within the D219 community. Fundraising and spreading awareness got is official start over the August 25-26 weekend at Skokie’s annual Backlot Bash. DM execs sold Rustic falls t-shirts and sponsored a dunk tank, with a number of Niles North and Niles West teachers volunteering to make a splash for charity.

Dance Marathon will be held May 25, 2013 at Niles North.

For more information on Rustic Falls Nature Camp, visit dm219.org and/or http://www.rusticfallsnaturecamp.org/