Our Christchurch team got together a few weeks ago for a 2-day staff training event (which happens once each term). Instructor Peter described it like this:

“April ran a session up at Sign of the Bellbird on pūrākau [Māori myths and legends], looking at the Māori place names of the local areas that we travel to on our programmes. Then we headed out to Little River and stayed the night there. Then I ran a session on flax weaving, looking at the tikanga [Māori customs] around it and methods of rope-making. Then we had a workshop on how to integrate these learnings into our Adventure Therapy/Adventure With Purpose programmes, before heading back to the office for adrenalin training.”

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The Christchurch team went on a “work” kayaking trip. Do you think they can call it work when they look that happy?!?? The actual purpose of the trip was so that our new instructor Rebecca could get deployed for white water #kayaking (she needed some ‘participants’ to manage). She aced it and is ready to head out on our upcoming kayak programmes. Welcome to the team, Rebecca!

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“It was a teambuilding exercise,” says Peter the instructor. “The brief was that each team had to make a rigid raft using both kayaks and come up with a team plan, before racing to the Avon River, paddling downstream, getting out on the far side, opening an envelope and completing the challenges on it, before paddling back upstream to their start point, ensuring that the envelope stayed dry the whole time.”

“Afterwards we talked about leadership – who showed it and how and then tried to define what leadership, in essence is. We talked about how it’s essentially an influence on an individual/group and this influence can be positive, negative, or sometimes we can even have no influence. We discussed how that means we could show leadership/influence through simple things like encouragement or support and how this could translate into other areas of life and their future careers as youth workers.”

This was an ABL [adventure-based learning] session with some first- and second-year Praxis students. Praxis is an education provider specialising in youth development. Each year, our interns study youth work through Praxis, then they come and do their practical work experience with us. Win-win!

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