Footprints on the Mountainside

Yeah, I’ve been missing from here for a long time. Too much happening in real life. My work at resonate, then my work with Wide Aware, some training for trainers I’ve been in the process of organizing….

Now, Wide Aware is in the process of designing a three day training programme for activity instructors in the outdoors. The current scenario with instructors is that there is no specific training that they undergo. Some instructors do the mountaineering courses in an effort to get some skills, but they are not particularly relevant to taking groups into the outdoors.

As a result, there are a lot of hit or miss processes.

This programme we are planning is a three day initiative designed specially for instructors who use outdoor adventure activities to support experiential learning objectives. While the course is still being designed, some of the intended content includes:

• How to handle activities
• How to execute programmes
• Handling ropes
• Belay systems
• Sequencing activities for optimal design
• Ratio of instructors to participants for various kinds of programmes
• Attitudes toward participant management
• Strategies and skills for working with different age groups
• Participant observation, interaction and guidance
• Risk management

Other possibilities being considered are orienteering, first aid, and some other subjects.

This programme is not intended to develop facilitation or training related skills, but restricts its scope toward activities in the outdoors and the role of the instructor conducting them.

The programme is planned for November at the YMCA campsite at Mulshi.

This programme is well suited for anyone who would like to develop skills for working with groups and conducting activities in the outdoors. Feel free to comment here with your feedback or if you would like to be informed when the final dates are announced.

As I had mentioned earlier, we are doing a Training the Trainer Programme for facilitators in the  outdoors.

Add value to your outdoor programmes with these skills and tools for facilitating active learning.

Empower Activity Camps and Wide Aware invite you to participate in a three day trainer-training programme designed especially for providers of outdoor training. Read more… »

Roger Greenaway is an outdoor facilitator and the person behind the immensely useful site on the subject - reviewing.co.uk - a man whose writings I have read on and off for the last three years, and emailed a few times with appreciation and link exchange requests, etc.

Imagine my surprise this morning to receive an email from him saying that he was planning to come to India for the first time in October to conduct an outdoor management training program at Empower Camps. Sushil Bhasin, one of the owners is someone I have known for years and we are in fact currently in a dialogue about doing some training programs together.

I promptly called up Sushil to gossip about this new coincidence. As we caught up with current stuff, I discovered that Sushil had set a goal for himself - that of being the first outdoor training organization in India to do work with international facilitators!!! How absolutely amazing.

In our busy lives, we are so fixated with creating our own images, and glorifying ourselves, it is rare to look for resources and opportunities to widen our experience, quality of work and talent sets. Not only did Sushil have this in mind, he actually pulled it through. This programme is tentatively scheduled for October. Read more… »

Wide Aware is happy to announce its first training and development blog carnival. This is intended to be an ongoing effort to engage in an exploration of different perspectives and insights related with training and development.

We are inviting entries for this edition of the carnival. The theme is the people in an organization, relating, team buiding…. the people side of places and what can be done to make them happier and more effective.

Come on, join this celebration of learning and development. Send in your article now.

The last date for sending the entries is the 10th of august. The carnival will be celebrated in our articles section on the 15th.

Children naturally enjoy the outdoors. Apart from exercise, and health, adventure education helps children develop natural resilience from experience. Learning through experience is a natural state of being for a child, and while imparting information and training is necessary, it is important that a child gets to explore the world on his or her own terms, learning to cope with consequences or celebrate them from personal experience.

A young girl on one of my camps was rapt with attention during the introductory rappelling session. She came up with this exact question “Do soldiers use these same tactical rappelling techniques?” Tactical rappelling techniques!!! I had never considered this term before.

Another child from the same session asked “Why do we call abseiling rappelling?”

The questions in themselves are not particularly significant. No particular knowledge is involved, and knowing those particular answers is not going to change anyone’s life.

What I found satisfying about them was that “my kids” had stopped simply swallowing information, and were now exploring it.