The daughters of St. Paul’s Hmong community often face hard realities. Raeann Ruth is committed to helping those young women find their place in American society. Ruth is founder and director of The Portage for Youth, an after-school enrichment center in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood of St. Paul for girls ages eight to 15. Because of its location, most of the participants are Hmong.

“The needs of young women from immigrant families and low-income homes are deepening,” said Ruth. “The Portage is filling a gap in their lives, nurturing their dreams and giving them practical experiences to give them hope and determination about their own personal futures.”

Ruth established The Portage in 1999, but she came up with the idea for an all-girls’ after-school enrichment program three years earlier, while working with the Mounds Park All Nations School and leading groups of urban youth on Boundary Water canoe trips. “There just weren’t enough services for young, urban women,” Ruth explained. “Yes, there was the YWCA and Girl Scouts, but the girls needed more than that.”

The Portage offers programming four afternoons a week during the school year and more often in the summer. “We’ve done karate, creative writing, gardening, video documentaries, photography exhibits, songwriting, conflict resolution and ESL classes with some of their mothers,” said Ruth.

Usually, 25-30 girls participate every quarter. Activities are free. Initially, schools referred many of the girls to The Portage, but now the girls come on their own, having learned about it from friends, neighbors, cousins and older sisters.

Each summer, Ruth takes the girls for a little rural fun. About six years ago, First Lutheran Church of St. Paul donated to The Portage an abandoned Boy Scout camp on Bay Lake, telling them if they fixed it up they could use it. With no running water or electricity at the site, Ruth said, “It’s a whole adventure unto itself.”

But it’s worth it, she explained, because, “A lot of Hmong girls have never been camping. We do archery, we go canoeing and cook outside.”

Until this year, The Portage had operated out of a house. But in 2000, Ruth received a precious gift: George Hardenbergh, a former Ramsey County commissioner, gave The Portage a boarded-up, 1920s movie house. The Mounds Theatre was in serious disrepair, but Ruth took on the renovations with gusto, securing grants and accepting donations of any kind—from funds to sheetrock to valuable, old-fashioned work time.

The renovation took three and a half years. In early 2004, The Portage programs moved in upstairs. A volunteer artistic director mapped out the Mounds Theatre’s first full season of events. In March, the theater will host Lunafest, a national touring festival of films by, for and about women. Proceeds will benefit breast cancer research and Portage programs.

“Our program has received frequent recognition,” said Ruth, “but funding is more fragile. Honestly, we are scrambling to raise funds to keep our doors open to the young women we have been serving.”

“But we accomplish great things will little money,” she added. “We guide girls, help them navigate life. Traditionally, Hmong girls do chores and baby-sit siblings after school, but these girls view the world with different eyes. What we’ve given them is a different way to look at the world. We are creating caring, nurturing women that want to contribute to society.”