A journey-based course that puts participants into mountain, river and coastal country for long enough that it stops being scenery. Runs from three days to a full expedition, for school environmental programmes, eco-adventure groups and conservation partnerships.
The group carries what it needs and leaves nothing behind. That single constraint does most of the teaching. Water has to be found, rationed and treated. Camp has to go up on ground that will not be damaged by it, and come down without a trace. Weather has to be read early enough for the reading to matter.
Participants navigate rather than follow. They are given the map, the ground and the consequences of getting it wrong by an hour, and instructors let them work it out while keeping the margin safe.
By the third or fourth day the conversation changes. A group that arrived talking about the view starts talking about the erosion on the path, where the water in this valley comes from, and the litter someone else left at the last campsite. That shift is the outcome conservation partners are funding.
“There exists within everyone a grand passion, an outlandish thirst for adventure, a desire to live boldly and vividly through the journey of life.”
Kurt Hahn, founder
The country sets the shape of the day. Each one moves the group to new ground, and each one ends with the group accounting for how it left the last place.
These are the outcomes a school, funder or conservation partner can expect to see named in the course report, with an individual assessment written for every participant.
The course suits any group that wants environmental understanding to come from experience rather than a classroom. A 2016 study by Master’s students at North-West University found that participants on an OBSA eco-adventure programme developed measurably on both intrapersonal and interpersonal levels, drawing on character strengths including perseverance, gratitude and an appreciation of beauty.
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.
For young people facing poverty, unemployment and limited opportunity. Hard but reachable challenges that leave each participant holding evidence of their own capability.
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.
