About eight months ago Michael
Wilson from Catalyst Entrepreneurial
Charity, came to me and suggested that we should buy the intellectual property
for a New Zealand
project called Project K. I had never
heard of Project K before but after a bit
of research I realised that this was one of the many things that the New
Zealanders had been getting right in education for over ten years.
C Project (Catalyst Project)
is a replica of Project K that we have purchased the right to use in Scotland.
The purchase of the intellectual property did not come cheaply, but we are
confident within our business plan that this was money well spent.
C Project is a 12
month programme for young people consisting of three distinct phases:
1. Wilderness Adventure
People take 21 days to break
a habit. Students are taken on an
adventure away from their families and peer groups and professional outdoors
instructors encourage them to face their fears and overcome them.
2. Community Challenge
Students are introduced to
their society and asked to put something back. The students visit the emergency services,
sporting and educational facilities provided by their society and shown how to
access the facilities available to them. Afterwards they are asked to come up
with a project that will benefit their society.
3. Mentoring
At the end of the Wilderness
Adventure the students are asked to make several goals that they feel they can
achieve. They are paired with mentors
whose role is to support the students in reaching their goals. The mentors work with the students in the
build up to their next diet of exams.
Mobex East
Lothian, a Volunteer
Development East Lothian Project (of which I am Chair and technical
advisor) were contracted to facilitate the Wilderness Adventure and Community
Challenge sections of C Project. East Lothian Council, in particular the Outdoor
Education Service, also provided exceptional support to make this project
happen.
Due to complications with
the funding we were late selecting our students for this year project and only
had the last week of term and the first week of the summer holidays to get
everything in place. However, I am very proud to say that we managed to achieve
this despite a huge amount of hard work.
For the last two weeks of
the summer holidays and the first week of the new term eight S5 students at Musselburgh Grammar School have been away completing
he Wilderness Phase of the project. I had an opportunity to meet with parents
during the evening of the 13th August (the day I flew back from the
States) to review progress. At the parents meeting one of the Mobex team showed
photographs and videos of how the group were getting on and there was an opportunity
for a letter exchange between students and parents. It should be noted that the
students were not at the meeting as one of the aspects of C Project is for students
to remain out of contact with their parents and peers for the duration of the
wilderness phase. Mobile phones were also not allowed.
This meeting was one of the
most powerful things that I have seen in terms of outdoor development and I was
almost tearful when I saw how well our young people from Musselburgh we getting
on and the obvious bond that had formed between them.
Today, I had the privilege of
being invited along to the Wilderness graduation ceremony. Where the C Project students were
reunited with their parents after 21 days in the field. The group also put on
an outstanding slide show of their achievements for the assembled audience. I
will try and post some of the pictures up here during the next week.
I’m sure that readers of
this site will agree that this is a very exciting project and time for Musselburgh Grammar School. Now that
the Wilderness Phase is over I will be writing up more about C Project during the
coming months.
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