HOW OUTDOORS SHAPE OUR LIVES

Active learning and adventure outdoors can have a place in a range of ecosystems: agricultural and metropolitan, resident and further remote. Outdoor education, training and recreation involve both young people and adults in a vast spectrum of experiences, including adventurous activities on land and water and activities with an environmental focus. Methods employed include skills-direct learning, questioning, problem-solving, team building and self-reliant journeys and activities, with residential experience a specially valued trait.

The Ten Gains of Outdoors

• Challenging experience outdoors affects powerfully upon a youthful person’s intellectual, physical, spiritual, social and moral development.
   
• Use of the outdoors contributes majorly to physical and environmental learning and complements many other curriculum fields. It assists in personal growth and social consciousness and improves skills for life and the world of work. It nurtures qualities such as a sense of responsibility and a purpose in life. There is an excellent deal of intrinsic pleasure and peace of mind to encounter from taking part in outdoor activities.
   
• Outdoor education, training and recreation promote active learning through direct personal experience and provide real-time excitement, entertainment and adventure within a framework of security.
   
• Building self-confidence and self-esteem are paramount to any young person’s development.
   
• Outdoor activities offer valuable opportunity, generally non-competitive, channels for achievement, and opportunities to build up independence and self-reliance. Through successfully facing up to the challenges, which outdoor activities offer in conquering fears and perceptions along the way, young people make significant strides in confidence, with ramifications for all aspects of their development.
   
• A confident attitude to learning is prerequisite if young people are to make the most of their education.
   
• Participation in interesting and enjoyable outdoor activities with educators, youth workers and peers reinforces a confident attitude to education and adds substantially to the general ethos of a school or youth group. Direct experience outside the porch stimulates and emphasizes learning across many sections of the syllabus, and the use of the outdoors encourages young people to earn greater responsibility for their own learning.
   
• Awareness of the desires and contributions of others and the ability to preserve effective relationships, at work and in the household, are fundamental in today’s society.
   
• Experience in the outdoors provides plentiful opportunities for personal and social development through carefully organized group work in challenging situations. Trust, care, love, tolerance and the willingness to give and receive responsibilities are encouraged, and it directly challenges anti-social behaviour and activities. It offers opportunities to explain and develop effective interpersonal behaviour and to work collectively in teams.
   
• It increasingly realizes the calculated use of leisure life as contributing substantially to a fulfilling lifestyle.