Chugachmiut offers Native Youth Olympics travel and coaching aid in seven communities

Chugachmiut offered Monday to help cover Native Youth Olympics travel, coaching and event costs for students in Tatitlek, Chenega, Valdez, Cordova, Port Graham, Seward and Nanwalek. The Chugach region's tribal nonprofit posted a notice asking the school districts and village councils that run NYO in those communities to get in touch.

Chugachmiut posted a substantially similar notice last November, naming the same seven communities and the same 2026 through 2030 school years. Available records do not show whether Monday's notice reposts that offer or changes it.

The notice says support may cover student travel to NYO meets, hiring and paying coaches, and local event coordination. Specific support will be worked out with each community, within what the project is allowed to pay for. Local NYO administrators keep running the programs, including hiring coaches and arranging travel.

"Through a new U.S. Department of Education grant, Gwangkumciit’stun Cutmen, Chugachmiut can sponsor student NYO participation during school years 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, and 2030," the notice said.

Federal spending records list the grant under the Education Department's Native Youth Community Projects program: $437,688 awarded in September 2025 and a $434,361 continuation in August 2026, for $872,049 obligated in total. The current funded period runs through September 2027. The records do not show how much of that money goes to NYO rather than the project's other work.

Grants in the program run three years at first and can be renewed for up to two more years if the grantee makes substantial progress, according to the department's 2025 competition notice. The later school years named in Chugachmiut's notice fall outside the current funded period.

Chugachmiut's federal application requested about $2.3 million. The nonprofit held an earlier grant under the same program, called "We Work Together for Educational Choices," with nearly $4 million obligated from 2020 to 2025.

The notice sets no deadline. Districts and councils can contact Chugachmiut's Litnaurwik Department of Education.