UK meets Africa in the Wilderness

Tune into BBC Radio Essex on Sunday 20th September at 7.20am

Wild Swans

-  four sixteen year old UK girls who returned recently from the wilderness in South Africa after spending fifteen days with four young South African girls from a very different background, will be talking about their trail and the effect it has had on them on BBC Radio Essex this Sunday at 7.20am.

The Wilderness Foundation UK’s hopes for the young women was that they would truly understand diversity, poverty, environmental issues that affect their generation, real awareness of the challenges and opportunities facing young women in their different communities, and a strong sense of self that will fast track their leadership now they have returned home.

The project called Wild Swans is about young women, wilderness and leadership. Papers in the UK recently cried out that there just were not enough women coming forward into leadership positions and the need to develop this section of the population was critical. Mixed with the issues of climate change, fossil fuels shortages and the growing gap between rich and poor nations, Wild Swans seeks to address this through experiential learning and social mixing in a wild, simple and challenging environment.