僅以此文感謝所有奉獻生活，燃燒生命的HELPERs

Growing up is hard and when there is no one guided you or accompany with you, you might go to the wrong trail. You might feel there is no way turning back but I would like to let you know there is always someone waiting for you as long as you are willing to open your mind and give it a try. 

Before the article, I would like to give a special Thanks to 王克威, the CEO of City People Foundation, who devoted his life into family adventure education and he used up his power as a helper. Also, I want ot give a big Thanks to  林明華, one of  my high school classmates, who lead me to see a different world.   

I like a few concepts that City People gave me

# 1 You don't have to feel sorry about those teenagers because once they stand up again, they will be stronger. 

# 2 No matter how much shall we paid for a teenager, as long as he or she can bounce back, everything is worthy. 

# 3 There is no immediately feedback for the efforts we have done, but we believed that there is a seed of kindness that already planted in his or her heart. 

# 4 We believed in you. Look at me. You can do it, right?  

( Trust is a hard lesson for those teenagers but for city people it is the essential or basic thing for a stuff. )

RECR 3230 - Adventure Education – Film Assignment (Tzu-Chun Lin)

I.   Name of the film: Trekking the Way Home

photo credit  https://www.facebook.com/trekkingthewayhome/

II. Brief overview of the story:

This film recorded City People Foundation doing their summer camp for  at-risk youth in 2014. 

The documentary had two storylines; one recorded “Sunflower Girls”, who had experienced family violence or sexual assaults and the foundation opened their house and love to adopt them as family members. This group had a much closed relationship, they knew each other well and were willing to help each other in need. They had already done many challenges like low elements and high elements before. In this film, they were doing a kayak trip in Green Island, Taiwan and challenging themselves rappelling a 50 meters high rock.

photo credit  https://www.facebook.com/trekkingthewayhome/

Another one recorded a 28-days boy only summer camp, those “Little Warriors” were from different places in Taiwan and most of their family lost their functions, some of them were single parent, some of them were from orphanage, and some were from jail. They didn’t have much experiences about outdoor activities but they experienced different adventures in this camp, such as tracing the river, low and high elements, and mountain hiking. Through these outdoor activities, they built up confidence, established a new relationship with others, and be willing to conquer new challenges in their lives. In this film, their ultimate goal was climbing up Nanhu Mountain (Chinese: 南湖大山), the 5th highest mountain in Taiwan and its elevation of 3,742 m

III. What qualifies this as an adventure experience?

The trip in the film was metaphoric. Take the Sunflower Girls rappelling from the 50 meter high rock for an example.  For those special teenagers, the purpose of this camp were to help them to build up confidence, and encourage them to conquer difficulties in their real lives. Before they challenged themselves, the stuff guided them to think some questions and invited them to write the answers on a piece of paper. The questions were, “What the difficulty you are going to face in your real life?”, “Is there anything that confused you or might be a big problem for you?” Leave a sentence for yourself after this task.”  While they were doing the challenge, one of the girls rebuffed to descent off the rock by the means of yelling and crying, but others still waited for her penitently and encourage her to step out her comfort zone. Furthermore, one of the staff was willing to accompany with her and in the end they all completed this task. After the challenge, the stuff invited them to read out the answers one by one. One of the girls said, “If I can conquer the big rock, then I felt like I have the courage to face the problem in my life.” Another girl said, “It was the first time I felt like somebody was willing to stand by me, accompany with me.  I felt like I was not alone and WE can go further and lead a brighter lives.”  

photo credit  https://www.facebook.com/citypals/

Take the little warrior for another example. Before they arrived in the Nanhu Mountain, the stuff asked them to write a sentence to express their feeling of this trip. One of the boy wrote, “Sorry, my dear parents. Now I just wanna go home.” It was an easy sentence but we can tell the boy moved a big step to be reconnected with his family. There was an interesting case in the trip.  One of the boy was hurt but he still insisted on climbing up on the top of Nanhu Mountain. He wrote, “It was the first time that I faced difficulty but I didn’t give up and chose to keep going.”     
 

IV. Explain how the film increased your understanding of one or more course concepts.

In the film, we can see two different types of groups and the leadership is different too. As for Sunflower Girls, they lived together for a while and they already experienced some adventures together. Thus, in the beginning of the trip, the group was at norming stage and then upgraded to performing stage. The leadership stayed in democratic and the leader guided them to think, to discussion and to share their feelings. However, for the Little Warrior, they were from different places, and some of them were rejected to work with each other. Therefore, this group stayed in forming stage for a long time and when they did the challenge together they moved on storming stage. There was one turning point in the film that moved the group to Norming stage was one boy got hurt and the other boy was willing to help him to take care of his belongings. Obviously, the leadership kept in autocratic style. For example, due to the sickness of a boy, the leader decided to cancel the further trip and without any discussion with his members he just announced and took action.

photo credit  https://www.facebook.com/citypals/

 Reference 

《縱行囝仔》南湖星空全球首映全紀錄  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xdoO74EEto

《縱行囝仔》紀錄片主題曲  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j56PWi5cqH0

28-day trip  https://citypeople.eoffering.org.tw/contents/text?id=57

City People Foundation  http://photo credit  https://www.facebook.com/citypals/

 adventure film 

Meru (Alpine Climbing)

Touching the Void (Alpine Climbing/Survival Story)

127 Hours (Canyoneering/Survival; Not a documentary but surprisingly accurate. I’ll take it)

Free Solo (Rock Climbing)

The Dawn Wall (Rock Climbing)

180 Degrees South (Climbing, Surfing, Sailing)

Deep Water (Around the World Sailing Race)

Riding Giants (Big Wave Surfing)

The Halo Effect (Whitewater Kayaking)

The Last Descent (Whitewater Kayaking)

Congo: The Grand Inga Project (Whitewater Kayaking)

Unbranded (Horseback Riding from Mexico to Canada)

Man on Wire (This one’s a surprise)

 feedback 

Tzu-Chun:

I enjoyed reading your paper and learning more about some of the ways adventure experiences are used to help youth in Taiwan. It sounds similar to the types of things we do here in the United States. This sounds like what we would call a “wilderness therapy” or “wilderness treatment” program. Here is a link for the Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Council: https://obhcouncil.com/.

You made some good observations about characteristics of adventure experiences, group development, and leadership styles. I also noticed some things that fit in with our discussion of conditional favorability and risk management.

I did not grade your paper since you are auditing the course, but here is a copy of the rubric that I use in case you are interested. I read the papers, make comments on them as I progress, and add scores to the rubric. I add a summary like the one above to all of the papers.