A change of scenery can change a life. That’s the idea behind City Kids Adventures — and it’s the philosophy that earned the organization one of San Antonio’s most prestigious honors.
Leon McNeil and his wife, Leticia McNeil, are the grand marshals of this year’s Texas Cavaliers River Parade, a recognition of the couple’s three decades of work connecting local children with the outdoors.
From the classroom to the great outdoors
Leon and Leticia McNeil founded City Kids Adventures in 1995 after noticing a troubling pattern while working as middle school teachers in San Antonio.
“Kids were engaged in a lot of non-productive activities when we started teaching,” Leon McNeil said. “We knew that the outdoors provided an outlet for them to be able to engage in more productive things. I camped. She camped when she was growing up. And I learned about it a lot in college. And it was an idea that — you know what? If we can get these kids turned around a little earlier, maybe they’ll go on and be productive members of our society.”
The program they built is designed to meet kids where they are.
“We basically refer to our program as an inclusive outdoor mentoring program where they don’t have to go anywhere to have an outdoor experience,” Leon McNeil said.
Adventures that go far beyond San Antonio
Thirty years later, the program offers no shortage of ways for kids to connect with nature and explore the world around them.
“We do a river cleanup — San Antonio River cleanup — in our kayak,” Leticia McNeil said. “We do bicycling. In the summer, we take a group of teenagers, eighth graders and up, where we go and travel somewhere in the United States. We try and capture every region of the United States, so by the time they graduate, they’ve visited almost the whole United States.”
This summer’s trip may be the most ambitious yet.
“This coming summer, we’re taking 12 kids in an RV to Alaska,” Leticia McNeil said. “We’ll be gone for five weeks.”
The program also includes ski trips and hunting excursions — activities that push participants well outside their comfort zones.
“Hunting is a big part of our program as well,” Leon McNeil said.
Even the founders find themselves learning alongside the kids.
“I’ve never skied in my life, but now I’m a great pizza guy — I can pizza down the mountain all day long,” Leon McNeil said with a laugh. “But yeah, skiing was a new activity for us. It was a challenge.”
More than fun — a foundation for life
The adventures are purposeful. For the McNeils, every trip is an investment in a child’s future.
“It gives them an opportunity to be a well-rounded individual and thrive in an environment that may be difficult for them sometimes socially,” Leon McNeil said.
The program reaches kids as young as second grade — and the relationship often lasts a lifetime.
“We’re getting them as young as second grade, third grade, and they stay with us through middle school, through high school, college — and then they come back and act as mentors,” Leon McNeil said. “Now we have kids that have their families and their kids are still part of the program.”
The results speak for themselves.
“Right now, our two shining stars are at Vanderbilt and they’re doing some amazing things,” he said.
“We have kids now that are police officers in San Antonio, teachers in San Antonio, architects,” Leon McNeil said. “And so it’s making our city a better place with kids that came from that city, came from the environment. It’s really, really important for us to be able to continue to do that — just because it’s going to make our city a better place and our world a better place.”
The lesson only nature can teach
At the heart of City Kids Adventures is a simple but powerful truth about the limits of a single environment.
“If your environment never changes, what do you learn from that environment? Whatever it has to offer,” Leon McNeil said. “A kid that’s coming from the inner city — they see all the aspects of city life: good, bad, ugly, every aspect of city life — until they get outside in the country and the environment changes. Then they start to see that there’s other aspects of life that they never knew about.”
That transformation wouldn’t be possible without community support — and the Texas Cavaliers have been a key part of making it happen.
“A lot of things that we do, we couldn’t do without their support,” Leon McNeil said.
For the McNeils, being named grand marshals of the River Parade is an honor they don’t take lightly.
“It’s a blessing, but we’re humbled to be representing our city in such a grand fashion,” Leon McNeil said.