Bamboo Resilience

Bamboo Resilience
A Project Adventure Trauma Relief Program for Japanese Teachers & Students

One year ago, on March 11, 2011, Japan was devastated by a major tsunami and the country is still reeling from the effects and aftermath. Not only is there still massive physical damage, but the emotional impacts on adults and children in the affected regions are considerable. We know that children are an especially vulnerable population after natural disasters.  They need timely assistance in recovery so that they and their communities can work towards building a positive future.

Last November, Project Adventure Senior Trainer and Gloucester High School Teacher Jim Schoel travelled to the Miyagi Prefecture of Japan which was significantly impacted by the tsunami; he spent two days leading a workshop on Bamboo Resiliency for 22 Japanese teachers from the region including 3 PA Japan trainers. The goals for workshop participants were to develop

• An understanding of resiliency as it relates to traumatic events (Bamboo Resiliency)

• A deeper understanding of the Full Value Contract and how it can be used with trauma sufferers

• An understanding of how to facilitate students’ healing without them reliving their trauma

• A caring network by giving teachers a space in which to share their experiences teaching young people affected by trauma and giving opportunities to identify what future work is needed

Jim knows that Adventure programming is an excellent approach to addressing the needs of traumatized children and adults. For Tsunami victims, PA focuses on the concept of resiliency, or the ability to learn from and to incorporate the skills and strengths gained by surviving and recovering from trauma. Resiliency is a learned skill and greatly aids and improves recovery from traumatic events. This Bamboo Resiliency Trauma Relief Program is based on PA’s active learning methods and features an engaging group development process centered on the Full Value Contract. 

Bamboo Resilience Full Value Contract

Be Here	Creating commitment and connection so that healing relationships can form
Be Safe	Creating a safe environment to provide hope
Set Goals	Recognizing resiliency survival skills and accomplishment of tasks
Be Honest	Remember and mourn
Let Go & Move On	Honor the memories of friends and loved ones through resiliency which involves accepting powerlessness, cultivating group hardiness and practicing interdependence
Care for Self & Others	Group members build community through self-care, recognition of interdependence, empathic engagement and caring for others

This two-day Bamboo Resiliency pilot workshop was extremely successful and therapeutic for the participating teachers who are now using what they learned in their work with affected students. The teachers were also very excited that this program model builds community and a safe supportive environment for students to develop their resiliency skills. Given the promise of this program and the enormous need for resiliency around the globe, PA wants to expand this program to work with hundreds of thousands of students and teachers. Over the next several months, PA plans to develop a train-the-trainer as well as a direct service model for Japanese teachers in Bamboo Resiliency, along with associated educational materials in both Japanese and English. This will be a collaborative effort with Project Adventure Japan, who has already trained more than 5,000 teachers in PA methods over the last 20 years.

If you are interested in learning more about our initiatives, please contact us, check out our website or leave your comments below!

*Bamboo trees are known for their flexibility, bowing to even the strongest winds, but still standing

Project Adventure and ACCT Association for Challenge Course Technology

ACCT will hold its 22^nd annual conference in Boston this year – February 9-12 at Westin Boston Waterfront in Boston, MA – 607 attendees are expected.

The proximity of the conference has gotten us thinking about PA’s long and interesting history with ACCT.  In a recent interview, Bob Ryan, PA’s Director of Safety and RiskManagement , recalled a Ropes Course Builders Symposium in 1988 when members began discussing the need for an association. The first actual association meeting was held at an AEE conference at Smuggler’s Notch in the fall of 1993. There were 35 attendees. The founding members included:  Adventure Experiences, Cradle Rock, Inner Quest, Project Adventure and Signature Research.

The Association was formed to develop challenge course installation standards. Bob recalled a moment when the original members were trying to come up with a name for the organization. When Association for Challenge Course Technology was suggested, Rich Klajnscek, a PA builder at that time, jumped out of his seat and said, “Then the acronym would be ACCT!!” The name was finalized in that moment.

Project Adventure has been represented on the ACCT board and on a variety of committees since the beginning. Randy Smith of Inner Quest served as the first board president;  DickProuty of PA as the first vice president. Bob Ryan has served on the board for approximately 10 years.

PA is honored to support and participate with this essential and progressive organization.

Click here to join our Facebook discussion on ACCT!

Payson Arizona Challenge Course & Training

Project Adventure recently completed installation of an extensive challenge course for the Payson, Arizona Unified School District. Donna Moore, coordinator of Health and Physical Education for the Payson schools had previously developed a challenge course program through a PEP grant for a school system in Safford, AZ.  Project Adventure’s Bill Bates worked with her to apply for the Payson PEP grant.

The extensive course includes a climbing tower, a dual zip wire and a wide variety of low and high elements. A team of physical educators from Payson’s high school, middle school and elementary schools have participated with exuberance in a series of trainings including Adventure Programming, Adventure Curricula for PhysicalEducation and a Technical Skills Intensive.

Click here to read the article from The Payson Roundup

When doing team development, why focus on trust and building relationships?

by Peter Aubry

This question often arises when working with a client to design a team building day. It usually comes up in the process of creating a needs assessment. Sometimes this is followed by a request to just focus on problem-solving methodology and to stay away from the interpersonal dynamics on the team or individual team member needs. This area of work is often referred to as the “touchy-feely” aspect and many clients don’t want any of that in their program!

Amazingly enough, this request not to get “too touchy-feely” is made by a variety of clients including social service agencies, schools and corporate groups.

When this concern comes up, I usually address it in the context of the John Adair model. 














The Adair model indicates that, in addition to communication, motivation and vision, the leader must attend to building the team, developing individuals and, yes, accomplishing the task.

In my experience, trust is the most essential element in good work relationships and especially in developing high performing teams. Although trusting each other at work makes everything much easier, it is not easy to achieve. In many work worlds, employees are rewarded for controlling and protecting information that insures they keep their position in the company. Knowledge is power and security, right? Expertise, technical or otherwise, makes you irreplaceable, right? So why share information and expertise in these environments?

Clients often ask, “Can we build the team and not deal with the problem of relationships on the team?”
How would you respond to this?
One answer I offer is that they can, but then, do they really need a team? Wouldn’t they be better served by a ‘work group’? A work group can deliver solid performance results when all is said and done. The work group has a central leader who directs various functions with all members reporting directly to him or her. They deal with all the conflicts and issues and are ultimately responsible for the results. So…yes you can deal with just the task at hand. Why then would you want a team? In their book The Wisdom of Teams, J.R. Katzenbach and Douglas Smith suggest that work groups are used when organizations are not looking for significant incremental performance results. A Real Team, on the other hand, is looking to achieve significant results, sometimes exponential, and has a group of people “who are equally committed to a common purpose, goals, and working approach for which they hold each other accountable.” Therefore, if we are going to build a team, don’t we have to address the people side of the equation?

There is a tendency in some work cultures to avoid conflict or have management deal with conflict. This can stem from an underlying mistrust in the organization, other individuals, the team or the team leader, etc. So how do you build a team of people if they are going to avoid conflict or have underlying trust issues? I would venture to say that you have to focus on relationships and the subject of trust as it relates to the team.

What would you say? At Project Adventure, we address this topic by having teams develop norms of behavior that allow them to deal with the issues that arise in an environment of safety. Having the ability and resources to deal with conflict that naturally arises on a team is critical. It is also important to define those issues that management, human resources or leadership must deal with versus the team.

Team Norms can be developed and tied to organizational values. If values are not specific, and stated, they can be developed as part of the leadership team development.

Moving a team toward high performance must include focusing on the relationships and trust that exist on the team as well as the level of commitment of individuals on that team.

How do you address team development at your workplace? Do you work as a team or as a work group? What helps your team to function better?