A change of scenery can change a life. That\u2019s the idea behind City Kids Adventures \u2014 and it\u2019s the philosophy that earned the organization one of San Antonio\u2019s most prestigious honors.<\/p>\n
Leon McNeil and his wife, Leticia McNeil, are the grand marshals of this year\u2019s Texas Cavaliers River Parade, a recognition of the couple\u2019s three decades of work connecting local children with the outdoors.<\/p>\n
From the classroom to the great outdoors<\/p>\n
Leon and Leticia McNeil founded City Kids Adventures in 1995 after noticing a troubling pattern while working as middle school teachers in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids were engaged in a lot of non-productive activities when we started teaching,\u201d Leon McNeil said. \u201cWe 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 \u2014 you know what? If we can get these kids turned around a little earlier, maybe they\u2019ll go on and be productive members of our society.\u201d<\/p>\n
The program they built is designed to meet kids where they are.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe basically refer to our program as an inclusive outdoor mentoring program where they don\u2019t have to go anywhere to have an outdoor experience,\u201d Leon McNeil said.<\/p>\n
Adventures that go far beyond San Antonio<\/p>\n
Thirty years later, the program offers no shortage of ways for kids to connect with nature and explore the world around them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do a river cleanup \u2014 San Antonio River cleanup \u2014 in our kayak,\u201d Leticia McNeil said. \u201cWe 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\u2019ve visited almost the whole United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
This summer\u2019s trip may be the most ambitious yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis coming summer, we\u2019re taking 12 kids in an RV to Alaska,\u201d Leticia McNeil said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be gone for five weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The program also includes ski trips and hunting excursions \u2014 activities that push participants well outside their comfort zones.<\/p>\n
\u201cHunting is a big part of our program as well,\u201d Leon McNeil said.<\/p>\n
Even the founders find themselves learning alongside the kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never skied in my life, but now I\u2019m a great pizza guy \u2014 I can pizza down the mountain all day long,\u201d Leon McNeil said with a laugh. \u201cBut yeah, skiing was a new activity for us. It was a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than fun \u2014 a foundation for life<\/p>\n
The adventures are purposeful. For the McNeils, every trip is an investment in a child\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives them an opportunity to be a well-rounded individual and thrive in an environment that may be difficult for them sometimes socially,\u201d Leon McNeil said.<\/p>\n
The program reaches kids as young as second grade \u2014 and the relationship often lasts a lifetime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting them as young as second grade, third grade, and they stay with us through middle school, through high school, college \u2014 and then they come back and act as mentors,\u201d Leon McNeil said. \u201cNow we have kids that have their families and their kids are still part of the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
The results speak for themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, our two shining stars are at Vanderbilt and they\u2019re doing some amazing things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have kids now that are police officers in San Antonio, teachers in San Antonio, architects,\u201d Leon McNeil said. \u201cAnd so it\u2019s making our city a better place with kids that came from that city, came from the environment. It\u2019s really, really important for us to be able to continue to do that \u2014 just because it\u2019s going to make our city a better place and our world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lesson only nature can teach<\/p>\n
At the heart of City Kids Adventures is a simple but powerful truth about the limits of a single environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf your environment never changes, what do you learn from that environment? Whatever it has to offer,\u201d Leon McNeil said. \u201cA kid that\u2019s coming from the inner city \u2014 they see all the aspects of city life: good, bad, ugly, every aspect of city life \u2014 until they get outside in the country and the environment changes. Then they start to see that there\u2019s other aspects of life that they never knew about.\u201d<\/p>\n
That transformation wouldn\u2019t be possible without community support \u2014 and the Texas Cavaliers have been a key part of making it happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of things that we do, we couldn\u2019t do without their support,\u201d Leon McNeil said.<\/p>\n
For the McNeils, being named grand marshals of the River Parade is an honor they don\u2019t take lightly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a blessing, but we\u2019re humbled to be representing our city in such a grand fashion,\u201d Leon McNeil said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A change of scenery can change a life. That\u2019s the idea behind City Kids Adventures \u2014 and it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":741355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,134406,2824,7202,7203,358,305087,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-741354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fiesta","10":"tag-outdoors","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-texas-cavaliers","15":"tag-tx","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116438465946385683","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}