
For Carrinnia Woodson, co-founder and co-director of Teen Trek, helping the local youth grow responsible identities and learn significant life skills is where her focus is directed.
“In our workshops, we try to integrate different styles of learning, so sometimes we may have in-class learning, virtual learning, [or] community-based options where we go out into the community,” Woodson said. “We want a lot of our workshops to be hands-on. I just think about all of the different things that would make someone successful in life, and our classes are never the same.”
Teen Trek is an educational organization based in Germantown that fosters the development of youth under 17 years of age by helping them discover and learn everyday life skills through a range of interactive lessons.
The variety of skills and knowledge they teach to youth members, which are taught through programs that either depend on a particular partner organization or a specific need of a local enrollee, has consisted of courses and trips that emphasize financial literacy, health and wellness, fire and water safety, culinary skills, team building, and community outreach.
The organization’s story originates from a period of hardship and uncertainty in Woodson’s life, where the development of her 16-year-old son was a monumental priority that would eventually result in action.
“I had heart surgery in August 2023, and the fear that my youngest son wasn’t equipped with the life skills to succeed if I was no longer here overwhelmingly worried me,” Woodson said. “I started to plan experiential activities for him and his friends, including things like cooking classes [and] grocery shopping so they can learn all of its aspects, and taking them to PennDot to obtain an ID.”
“The parents of his friends began to ask if they could also participate,” Woodson shared. “It then became clear that it was much needed for a lot of teens, and I discovered that a lot of people were willing to help.”
In April 2024, she officially launched Teen Trek as a life skills and outdoor adventure organization focusing on practical, hands-on experience. What started as lessons that would just teach her son and his friends’ life skills and healthy habits began to grow steadily, with more in-depth programming being established throughout the spring.

Teen Trek has been able to spread its influence throughout the city and utilize essential resources for its programming by consistently partnering with organizations that have supported its mission. When connecting with these partners, they got the help of experienced representatives from multiple fields to interact with the youth.
“Honestly, I just reached out to a lot of different organizations that I felt were life skills related and asked if they would help inner-city youth, and I was overwhelmed by the positive responses I received,” Woodson said. “[For example] I wanted to teach a basic repair workshop and I went to Home Depot. They gave me a bunch of gift cards, [resources], and asked me what I needed.”
Another example is their partnership with the American Red Cross, which helped her start the water and fire safety courses that she organized, where she even had someone who’s an ambulance driver and a firefighter come out to speak.
She would also hold financial literacy classes at Chase Bank, and overall, they began to establish themselves as an entity that connects the youth with different lessons, speakers, and life topics that can heavily vary.
Other partners have bought into Teen Trek’s vision and have assisted with turning their vision into a reality, consisting of Habitat for Humanity, Outward Bound Philadelphia, and The Giant Company.
“The outdoor adventure aspect of Teen Trek is to give inner city kids the experience of attending [trips such as] Phillies games, Eagles games, whitewater rafting, horseback riding, swimming lessons, and a lot of different things,” Woodson said. “Things that they wouldn’t normally get to experience in the city because a lot of kids don’t really get to [travel around] the city.”

Co-director of the organization, Vinina Williams, has a background as a psychologist in the Child Welfare Division of the Department of Human Services who has impacted the youth with social-emotional learning and crisis management by leading workshops and consulting with different organizations to teach the city’s youth how to maintain healthy identities. When pairing up with Woodson in July, they were able to mesh and add another element to Teen Trek’s programs.
“What I brought to the table was that social-emotional component, where we’re talking about personal academic achievement, self-awareness, and self-responsibility,” Williams said. “[Woodson and I] started to combine our lessons, integrating both the practical and social-emotional life skills that we want the youth to learn.”
In September, Teen Trek partnered with Team Final AAU Basketball, a premier youth athletic organization with teams competing in the Nike EYBL circuits.
They created the Team Final Academy through this opportunity, where they are now facilitating programs for middle school players. Now, kids can develop on the court and participate in programs that emphasize different aspects of life when off the court.
They then reached out to Outward Bound Philadelphia to further extend that focus of outdoor experiences and team building and implemented another opportunity for Team Final Academy youth.
On Saturday, November 2, Teen Trek took 25 kids to Outward Bound Insight Day at the James McLane Family Challenge Course at the Discovery Center. Participants got to step out of their comfort zones and engage in ground-based games, rock climbing, ziplining, and high ropes course challenges designed to emphasize teamwork, team trust, and resilience.

“We get a lot of positive, consistent feedback from parents and students, and after each class, we ask them what did you learn and what didn’t you know before the class,” Woodson said.
A parent of a sixth-grade Team Final Academy athlete, Andrew Kuhn, has observed the Team Final Academy lessons his son has been a part of and the impact it’s had on his journey.
They attended Outward Bound Insight Day, a goal-setting class on Saturday, October 12th, at Imhotep Institute Charter High School, also in Germantown, and a health and nutrition workshop on November 16 at Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, where they had to choose through different foods, categorize their nutritional value, and do CPR on mannequins.
“It’s tremendous; I don’t know of any other programs that I’m aware of that are teaching practical, high-leverage, grown-up skills to middle school kids,” Kuhn said. “The concept is really strong, and the delivery of the lessons from Teen Trek has been impressive.”
Mostly, they prefer to hold in-person classes and partner with different schools to run workshops in classroom spaces. Currently, they’re using rooms at Imhotep and Archbishop Wood.
Right now, their focus is on Team Final Academy. Still, Williams made it clear that Teen Trek will soon expand again to provide programs for different communities and demographics frequently.
“As we move forward, we would like to [maintain] our partnerships with Team Final and other organizations, as well as community-based courses that anyone can sign up for,” she said. “All that information will be on the website for community members to register for whatever classes they’re interested in. When we work with individual organizations, it’s an individualized program for what they identify their needs to be.”
Woodson also shared her vision for the next cohort: “I’m working on doing a leadership retreat in the Poconos, and they’re going to learn how to build campfires, the wildlife, setting up tents, and survival skills.”
She told the Germantown Info Hub, reflecting on her motivation, “I do this because I’m passionate about my son and what he needs to learn, but I feel like other kids need to learn these things too.”
For further information about their programs and volunteer opportunities to potentially help run a program, visit their website. Contact information is also available at the bottom of their site.