E huri tō aroaro ki te rā, tukuna tō ataarangi ki muri i a koe.
Turn and face the sun, and let your shadow fall behind you.

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Our late founder, Lyndsay Simpkin, mentioned the above quote in one of his regular newsletters … 14 years ago! For better or worse, it is still true. Lynsday continued:

“This reminds me that our work is important on many different levels. In his book, Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv coined the term ‘nature-deficit disorder’ to describe the consequences of separating children from the natural world.

“At Adventure Specialties Trust, we have long believed in the importance of reconnecting our sometimes-nature-deficient young people with the outdoors and providing them with the time, place and space to explore deeper feelings and issues.”

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“After a day’s walk, everything has twice its usual value.”

– G. M. Trevelyan

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Whāiate iti Kahurangi ki te tuohu koe me he maunga teitei

Seek the treasure you value most dearly: if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain

Purapura Whetu Trust

We partner with Purapura Whetu Trust on a regular basis. They are a Māori health and social services provider based in Canterbury. Together, we run our Te Māhuri adventure therapy programme for rangatahi youth in Canterbury.

Here is what Purapura Whetu wrote in the social media post that accompanied the above whakataukī:

“Make sure you’re following along as we start posting whakataukī! Let’s learn together!

What are whakataukī?

“Whakataukī are Māori proverbs. They have an important place in Te Ao Māori.

Whakataukī are commonly used as inspirations in speeches and also as gentle reminders spoken to each other in everyday life. They are poetic expressions of wise sayings which allude to symbols native to Aotearoa!

“What are your favourite whakataukī? Let us know below and we could feature these next!”

Find Purapura Whetu on social!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/purapurawhetutrust/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Purapura-Whetu-342769425901224

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“There are three ways of trying to influence the young: There is persuasion, there is compulsion, and there is attraction. You can preach at them: that is a hook without a worm. You can say ‘you must volunteer’: that is of the devil. And you can tell them, ‘You are needed.’ That one hardly ever fails.”

– Kurt Hahn of Outward Bound fame and arguably the father of modern outdoor education

Lynsday Simpkin, the founder of Adventure Specialties Trust, quoted the above quote in one of his letters. He continued:

“It is tempting, as Christians serving through outdoor adventure, to try and emphasise a person’s value by saying ‘Don’t you know that you are made in the image of God?’ but what if that person has no belief in God?

We can enforce moral boundaries and standards of behaviour for the duration of our programme, but transference back into real life is never guaranteed.

Maybe, though, with careful and prayerful planning, we can create an experience where being needed becomes self-evident and where the beauty of nature creates enough cracks for something of the truth and source of a person’s worth to seep on through.”

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A Life Full of Purpose

We don’t claim to know the meaning of life, but there is something intensely meaningful about spending time outdoors in nature, whether on your own or with other people, soaking in the wildness and the peace.

It feels like something full of meaning, full of purpose.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoyevsky’s literary works expore the human condition in the troubled political, social and spiritual atmospheres on 19th-centry Russian, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes.

His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov.

Dostoevsky’s body of works consist of 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as multiple of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.

[Copied from Wikipedia]

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“The hardest step to take is the first one out the door” – Ron Clarke

Anyone else struggling to feel motivated to keep active during lockdown?

I am trying to remind myself that I always feel better once I’ve been outdoors, even just for a short walk.

Please share your tips and tricks for how you motivate yourself to keep active, I would love to hear them!

Definitely needing motivation at the moment … ⠀
– Bex

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Do you know his story?

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and leader in the American civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.

King advanced civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. He was the son of early civil rights activist Martin Luther King Sr.

King participated in and led marches for blacks’ right to vote, desegregation, labour rights, and other basic civil rights. King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama.

King helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The SCLC put into practice the tactics of nonviolent protest with some success by strategically choosing the methods and places in which protests were carried out. There were several dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities, who sometimes turned violent. On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War.

In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People’s Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities.

King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the holiday was enacted at the federal level by legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honour, and the most populous county in Washington State was rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

(Paraphrased from Wikipedia)

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Do you know the story of Helen Keller?

Born in Alabama, USA, in 1880, she lost her sight and hearing after a bout of illness at the age of nineteen months.

She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan, who taught her language, including reading and writing. Sullivan’s first lessons involved spelling words on Helen’s hand to show her the names of objects around her.

Helen Keller also learned how to speak and to understand other people’s speech using the Tadoma method.

After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, she attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

She worked for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) from 1924 until 1968, during which time she toured the United States and travelled to 35 countries around the globe advocating for those with vision loss.

Helen Keller was a prolific author, writing 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to Mahatma Gandhi. She also campaigned for those with disabilities, for women’s suffrage, labour rights, and world peace.

– Summarised from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller)

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