We come to work every day with a mission to provide an Experience of Lifetime for our guests. As the leading company for our industry, we have a responsibility to broaden engagement in skiing and riding, which defines what we mean by Epic for Everyone. This is all the more important for kids who may not otherwise have the opportunity to get to our mountains.
Vail Resorts already has one of the most ambitious programs in the industry that provides mountain experiences to underserved youth. Our Company provides free lift tickets, ski school, equipment rentals and other services to non-profits who offer programs to nearly 4,500 kids and teens each year (over $5.5 million annually) at our resorts in Colorado, Utah, Tahoe and the Midwest. Today, on Giving Tuesday, we are announcing a new, exciting initiative to significantly expand our youth access efforts to serve more than 10,000 kids annually.
Our expanded footprint of 37 resorts gives us the opportunity to dramatically grow our reach. We are planning on launching programs for the 2020-21 winter season at more than a dozen of our resorts that serve major metropolitan areas, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland and Seattle, with the goal of enhancing access to winter sports for underserved youth and inspiring the next generation of skiers and riders. To ensure this initiative’s success and accelerate its launch, our CEO, Rob Katz, and his wife, Elana Amsterdam, will personally donate $10 million (USD) over the next five years to participating non-profits.
I invite all of you to help support these new programs as its success will require dedication and commitment from us all. I am looking forward to working together to break down barriers and expand access for underserved youth in the coming years.
This is another incredible component of Epic for Everyone and builds on other initiatives, such as Epic Day Pass (which offers season pass discounts to someone purchasing as little as one day of skiing), the Military Epic Pass (which offers significant discounts to those who served their countries in the armed forces), Epic SchoolKids (which offers free skiing to children in grades K-5 in Colorado, Utah and the Pacific Northwest) and the Epic Pass itself, which started it all.