Youth Adventure Trust

Sarah was struggling with her self-identity, her family relationships were under a huge strain and she was losing confidence in herself and those around her. Sarah’s school referred her to the Youth Adventure Trust in the hope that she could rebuild her self-esteem.

Through the YAT Adventure and YAT Mentoring Programmes, Sarah gained leadership skills, overcame challenges, built strong friendships and received consistent support for her mental health, all of which led to a life-changing transformation.

Click here to read Sarah’s story.

We know that we are able to have a life-changing impact on the young people we work with and would love to inspire even more young lives. At the beginning of this year we launched the new YAT Resilience Programme, a year long pilot which we hope will allow us to reach more young people more quickly than we can roll out the YAT Adventure Programme. It includes monthly activity days, supplementary take-home activities, and a coherent thread to provide a progressive and meaningful experience for young people.

We kicked off in February with two successful climbing-based days. Alongside climbing and bouldering, each young person learnt to tie two or three knots, and took home a piece of paracord to practice with - they'll need to remember the knots for a future activity day! The young people also played team building games and set themselves personal aims to work on over the coming weeks and months.

Click here to read more about the new YAT Resilience Programme.

We have some exciting adventures planned for 2023, and can't wait to get back out and about with our young people soon. This year, we’ll be challenging 300 young people to step out of their comfort zones so that they can develop resilience, confidence and teamwork - the skills they’ll need to fulfil their potential. Every Youth Adventure journey is unique and we'll be making sure each young person gets the individual support they need throughout their time with us to achieve their own goals.

The Youth Adventure Programme, running over 3 school years, makes up the bulk of our annual programme of activities. But even though we have a structure, one of the things we all love about the Youth Adventure Trust is that no one year is the same. Each group dynamic is different, which gives our Programme Managers a new challenge each year to find activities that will appeal to the young people they are working with, come up with ways to keep the group engaged and develop bespoke support packages to help the individuals on the programme achieve their personal objectives.

We'll be kicking off our 2023 Programme in February half term with adventure, creative or team challenge Activity Days for our younger group, whilst our older group will continue their Pathway Days with a 'Give Back' themed day volunteering on a community conservation project.

We'll be returning to the Jurassic Coast in May for Coastal Camps, and it won't be long until the days are long and we're running our summer Mountain and Forest Camps.

In June we'll say goodbye to the group who started their Youth Adventure journey back in 2021, so our Programme Managers will be kept busy helping them to prepare for their next steps, whilst also meeting the 80 young people who will be joining us in 2023.

We have 20 mentoring partnerships on the go at the moment and will have 20 new ones starting in the Autumn. And we have an exciting new project afoot....

So, watch this space for more success stories, more tales of adventure, more photos and more updates as 2023 progresses!