Positive Futures Through Nature
Patron: Lady Diana Kemp-Welch.
TurnAround was launched by the Wilderness Foundation UK in October 2007. It is a multi-faceted, nature based programme enabling vulnerable young people to make positive changes to their lives. This is achieved by linking community mentors, wilderness therapy, skills workshops and support for employment and further education over a twelve month period.
Every child has in them an aching void for excitement and if we don’t fill it with something which is exciting and good for him, they will fill it with something that is exciting and interesting – and that isn’t good for him. Theodore Roosevelt.
The participants share a variety of social and personal problems. Several have had lives that already include drug and alcohol abuse, dropping out from school, family breakdown, youth offending orders, low confidence and poor self esteem.
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, 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-to-date.
The Programme
The TurnAround Project initially takes young people out of their urban environment and, after some introductory sessions and seminars from professional wilderness therapists, gets them out into the wilds of Scotland where, with trained guides and their mentors, they can learn to appreciate the environment, work as a team and learn to do things for themselves.
On return, they enter a programme of monthly workshops as a group, supported by mentors and Wilderness Foundation UK staff. During this time, they have weekly face-to-face meetings with their mentor and may have other contact by telephone, email or other means where there is a need. They are also encouraged to become involved in community volunteering and work experience placements, provided by local charities, national bodies, local government and businesses.
Towards the end of their year, the participants have the chance to undertake a second wilderness trail, by which point they will have gained sufficient skills and self-esteem to be able to undertake the challenge unsupported.
The final phase of the programme is Graduation, where participants, families, mentors, supporters and youth workers all come together in a day of celebration, recognises the hurdles overcome and the achievements made. For many of our participants, this will include the award of various forms of certificated accreditation that has been earned during the course of the programme, including but not limited to: Trident Skills for Life Certificates; Trident Community Involvement Certificate; The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Certificate of Prior Learning (Skills and Physical Recreation Sections); the Essex Arts Award and the Essex Youth Award.
Monitoring and Evaluation by the University of Essex
For three years the Wilderness Foundation UK has been conducting research into the effect of wilderness experience on all the young people who take part in wilderness trail experiences in Scotland, Wales and South Africa.
As a result of the research, we know that the closer one feels to nature, the higher the increase in self esteem. This is a crucial finding in terms of understanding ‘wilderness effect’ and, linking to one of the major crises facing British youth as identified recently in a Europe wide report, British youth have the lowest self esteem in Europe. This has a knock on effect on their social habits in terms of mixing potentially with peers who have a bad influence on them, believing in themselves enough to make positive choices and to feel that they are good enough to take responsibility for life in their own hands.
The School of Biological and Social Sciences, under Professor Jules Pretty, will be following TurnAround for three years. Through this long term research, we aim to monitor the outcomes of each stage of the project, keep a close evaluation of each stage we go through, monitor the experiences of the coaches and coaching relationships, and to see how nature and wilderness experience effect the entire process.
For all the latest news on the TurnAround Project read the TurnAround Blog
"TurnAround", "The TurnAround Project" and the Compass Device are all copyright (c) 2007 Wilderness Foundation UK Ltd. All rights reserved.
