Wilderness Therapy Erasmus Project

Project Title

Wilderness Therapy

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The main goal of Wilderness Therapy project was to study the influence of WT programs on youth and spread the Wilderness Therapy methodology. This method involves the nature and tackles obstacles, which occure during the process of adolescence, like searching for self – identity or making up own decisions. According to the states of this method, time spent around the nature, without access to civilization, supported with adequate tools, therapists and the group support, helps to find own system of values and individual goals.

One of the first activities conducted during the project was training course for youth workers from Poland and Czech Republic on Wilderness Therapy conducted by Jo Roberts (Wilderness Foundation UK CEO) – the pioneer and expert of this method in Europe. The main goal was to give tools and teach the method professional, like experienced psychologists, sociotherpaists and pedagogues, who were in the next phase of the project implementing, while pilot program. The training was the WT mountain expedition at the same time and lasted 5 days.

The next phase was conducting Wilderness Therapy expeditions for 3 different youth groups from Poland and 3 expeditions for groups from Czech Republic. Participants of each nationality were divided into three subgroups: “high-risk”, “medium-risk” and “no risk”. The level of risk was assessed based on the anamnesis and diagnosis of the participants. Participants falling into the same risk category formed one group during expeditions. In total there were approximetly 50 young participants.
The expeditions were at the same time the part of the reasearch and aimed to answer the research question: What is the effect of wilderness therapy on young participants?

Creating adequate research tools, conducting WT expeditions for 6 youth groups, reasearch interviews with participants, intenrational and local cooperation on the resaerch and the guide, gathering the reasearch results and creating the databse and reasearch articles were the main activities we have performed during the project in order to publish “Practical Guide: How to Implement Wilderness Therapy Process” and the publication with reasearch results: The effect of Wilderness Therapy expeditions on youth participants. Both publications are available on wildernesstherapy.pl and Erasmus+ Project Result Platform.

Very important for the success of the project was the international cooperation between Aim High Association and Palacký Uniwersytetem Olomouc. Both of organization have recourses which were big value for the project. On the one hand we had great specialist in youth work and on the other hand there is partner with academic background, what is very important in terms of conducting researches. Combination of these two main competences had a big impact on the high quality of the project results.

Wilderness Therapy project gives chance to implement totally new method of working with youth in this part of Europe. The method could transfer the way of the youth work – competing high expectations towards youth, which leads to high pressure and psychic problems with supportive attitude in building self – identity, what learns young people social competences and avoids social exclusion. The database of workers, who are aware of WT method and research results with tool book of methods are a big support to change the system and way of thinking about youth work in this part of Europe. The resaerch results and the guide with WT tools give opportunity to practice the method in an effective way.
Worth to mention is that this was the first research on Wilderness Therapy methodology what gives a chance to be leader of Wilderness Therapy in Poland and Czech Republic.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 91055 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stowarzyszenie Mierz Wysoko & Country: PL

Project Partners

• UNIVERZITA PALACKEHO V OLOMOUCI