A journey-based course built on a simple principle: set challenges that are genuinely hard but reachable, and let each participant finish the week holding proof of what they can do. Runs from three days to a full expedition, for at-risk youth, community development programmes and reintegration partnerships.
The course does not tell participants they are capable. It puts them in situations where the only way through is to be capable, and then makes sure they notice what they did – carrying a pack further than they thought they could, making a climb they had written off that morning, cooking for the whole group at the end of a day they wanted to quit at lunchtime.
Instructors keep the challenge inside reach. Hard enough to be real, never so hard that failure becomes the lesson. Nobody is forced to attempt anything they are not comfortable with, and a participant who chooses not to climb still has to get the group and its gear to the top of the pass.
The debrief then names it plainly. Not “well done”, but “what did you do today that you did not think you could do this morning?” Participants go home with a reference point, and it is the reference point rather than the achievement that lasts.
“Education must enable young people to effect what they have recognized to be right, despite hardships, despite dangers, despite inner skepticism, despite boredom, and despite mockery from the world.”
Kurt Hahn, founder
Every day is built the same way: a challenge with a real outcome, then a debrief that turns it into something the participant can name and carry.
These are the outcomes a funder or CSI partner can expect to see named in the course report, with an individual assessment written for every participant.
Outward Bound South Africa has run this course for young people in conflict with the law as part of their rehabilitation, for young people living on the streets of inner-city Johannesburg, and for school groups in communities where unemployment is the default expectation. Of one group that completed a course alongside a skills programme, 80 percent went on to find work.
Most partners fund one theme and add another in a later cycle. All three run in the same formats, on the same bases, and produce the same reporting.
Every participant leads the group for a day, then hears from the group how it went. For school leadership bodies, bursary cohorts and emerging leaders.
Mountain, river and coastal journeys with the practical skills that go with them – navigation, minimal-impact camping, reading weather and terrain.
The full overview of how an Outward Bound course works, the three programme themes, and the formats they run in.
Course length, group size and content are set with you, and costs are quoted per programme rather than off a price list. Tell us who you are working with, roughly how many of them, and what you want them to walk away with.
We are a registered non-profit with Section 18A status, so corporate and CSI partners receive the documentation their reporting requires.
