Held on a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon in October at the Danbury Outdoor Centre, nine young participants between the ages of 15 and 17, coaches and staff, come together to start a journey, over nine months, supporting each young person to make positive changes in their lives and to work towards a sustainable future for themselves.

This first day was the start of working together with wilderness therapists, life coaches giving individual weekly support and skilled facilitators used to working with young people in the outdoors.

The youth share a variety of social and personal problems. What unites them is the fact that they have all signed and agreed contracts to work towards learning how to take on personal responsibility and are committed to the programme, are very excited to journey to Scotland to their first wilderness trail on the Isle of Mull and want to work as a group towards personal change.

They are supported by parents, social workers and probation officers and a target for the project is to keep families and key workers up-do-date with their progress.

The first meeting today focused on Belonging, which involved trust and teamwork exercises. Lack of belonging is seen as a major crisis in industrialised society and young people often feel adrift as to who they belong with and to whom.