Until last week, 17-year-olds Josh Pigford and Josh Bell had never seen snow.

Now, the Wilmington, North Carolina, residents have experienced skiing, snow tubing, fat-tire biking on snowy trails, snowmobiling and a trip up Mount Washington in a SnowCoach.

A cooperative nor’easter dumped 2 feet of snow just prior to their weeklong visit to Maine, and they enjoyed every minute of it.

The high school seniors were in Bethel last week as guests of Ian Blair, a business consultant and former Wilmington resident.

Blair relocated to Bethel with his family several years ago, but maintains close ties to his former city.

Pigford and Bell are participants in Camp Schreiber, a nonprofit that brings a small group of teenage boys from low-income families in Wilmington to a remote, privately-owned island in the northern tip of Lake Huron for a week each summer.

Created in 2011 by John Monteith, owner of Wilmington-based Monteith Construction, whose family owns the island where the camp is located, the program is designed to break the cycle of poverty and low aspirations that plagues many students from low-income families in Wilmington.

Camp Schreiber is currently serving 18 boys, most of whom, like Bell and Pigford, joined the program prior to the beginning of their seventh-grade year. Participants remain enrolled throughout middle and high school, and spend one week each summer at the remote island camp.

During the remaining 51 weeks of the year, they receive four hours of tutoring each week from highly qualified educators who create individualized lesson plans with a focus on rigorous academics in preparation for college.

They are expected to maintain high grades during their years in the program, and are taken on college visits and supported throughout the college application process.

“We have very high expectations of them,” said the program’s executive director, Meagan Verdi.

Bell and Pigford’s trip to Maine was part of what Verdi called “the exposure part of the program — getting them out of Wilmington to see what opportunities are out there for them.”

“Wilmington is an incredibly beautiful area, but there is a huge gap, economically,” she said.

“The cost of living is high, and there are many very wealthy people, but also extreme poverty, and the communities that these low-income kids come from have high rates of crime and gang violence.

“Our mission is to create college-educated leaders who give back to their communities,” she said.

Students are selected for the program based on their high potential, demonstrated by their personal drive, work ethic and character.

“We ask teachers to identify those students about whom they may have thought, ‘if only I could just take this kid and focus my attention on him, it could make a real difference,’” Verdi said, adding that Camp Schreiber provides the mentorship, tutoring and support needed to “level the playing field.”

Once identified, students and their parents undergo an extensive application process.

“We are making a big commitment, about $5,000 per student per year, and we need them to be able to commit to the program as well,” Verdi said.

Students in the program have numerous opportunities throughout the year to shadow board members and supporters of the camp.

For example, Verdi said, last year Bell completed an internship with Live Oak Bank.

There are also “social days,” including trips to amusement parks and to Charlotte for basketball games, dinners for the boys and their families with Camp Schreiber founder Monteith, and even shopping trips.

“We reward grades with incentives at the end of the semester,” Verdi said. “We’ll get them that one item they really want — some of them are really motivated by a pair of Jordan’s. Whatever it takes to get them motivated to get the grades.”

During their annual week on the island, which has no electricity, running water or access to phone or internet service, the boys focus on leadership and team-building.

They participate in an array of challenging outdoor activities, as well as daily writing periods and college information sessions, all designed to build character and raise educational aspirations.

Bell and Pigford are in their sixth year with the program, having joined together when they attended the same middle school in Wilmington. Although they now attend different public high schools, Verdi said they have remained best friends.

Both have high educational aspirations, and have already been accepted at some of the colleges to which they have applied. Verdi said they will hear later this month from their top-choice schools, which include UNC Chapel Hill and Clemson University.

For its participants, and, by extension, for their communities, the strategies employed by Camp Schreiber are paying off in a big way, cultivating leadership and raising aspirations.

“We have a 100 percent college acceptance rate” for the campers who have been through the program since it began, Verdi said, noting that most of the boys will be the first in their families to attend college.

On Friday, their last full day in Maine, Bell and Pigford spent the morning touring and attending classes at Gould Academy, then returned to Blair’s home to grab a quick lunch and change their clothes for a snowmobile adventure.

As they reported on their Gould visit, Pigford, who plans to major in engineering in college, told Verdi, “They were having a quiz in the calculus class I visited, so I took it, too.”

“Oh, yeah? How’d you do?” she asked.

“I got a hundred,” he said.