In 2017, Outdoor Outreach launched an innovative partnership with Movement BE.
Through an 18-month collaboration, Movement BE and Outdoor Outreach will use outdoor recreation, storytelling workshops, and platforms for self expression to create a safe space for teens to think critically about their environment, explore important psychosocial issues, and support a positive sense of identity.
In partnership with teachers, counselors, and administrators at 15 middle and high schools throughout San Diego County, this collaboration will engage students identified as high risk to participate in out of school time programs that integrate storytelling workshops with recreation outings. The recreation components led by Outdoor Outreach will include half-day, full-day and overnight activities like rock climbing, kayaking, surfing, and camping, that enable students from Morse High School to safely move outside of their comfort zone and challenge their ideas of what they can do and be.
Movement BE will provide students with creative poetry and storytelling workshops to deconstruct their outdoor recreation experiences and explore issues around vulnerability, fear, risk, trust, dependency, racial stereotypes, failure and achievement. Teens will develop strength-based self narratives and have opportunities to share them through public forums and open mic events. Throughout the program, youth will connect to one another and to positive role models using Movement BE’s social media platform. This will allow them to stay connected to this supportive peer network far beyond the program completion.
All program activities will intentionally involve staff and community volunteers with whom the participants can identify. The connections that the youth form with these supportive role models will further emphasize the positive trajectories available to them. The collaboration’s success will enable this innovative youth development program to be scaled to additional schools across the San Diego region.
Stay tuned for updates about the program throughout the year!