Adventure Challenge Program


This program teaches youth life-skills through fun and engaging outdoor activities. The skills we incorporate are communication, teamwork, trust, problem-solving, goal-setting, and leadership; all are skills youth need to make good decisions, reach their goals, and have a bright future. Youth Odyssey works with youth ages 10-17 to teach them these skills through team-building activities, ropes challenge courses, kayaking, camping, hiking, rock climbing, and backpacking.

LEVEL ONE

Portable Team Challenges onsite (2 hours each)

These are two-hour teambuilding activities held at local recreation centers, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, parks, and other youth agencies around the Coastal Bend. Activities are interactive games and challenges focused on developing and enhancing basic life skills.

LEVEL TWO

Ropes Challenge Couse (All Day – 6 hours)

A fun day trip to our ropes course where youth participate in low and high elements. Low elements consist of activities on the ground that foster teamwork, overcoming challenges, and support. The high elements such as rock-climbing and walking across a cable suspended 35 feet in the air, are facilitated by trained and certified belayers. The focus for the high elements are using your team and personal drive to overcome fears, problem-solving, and to push yourself to new limits in a safe/controlled way.

Kayaking Day Trip

We have found that day kayaking trips initiate many of the teachable moments that manifest themselves while at the ropes course. In tandem kayaks, individuals must learn to work together, while paddling the two-man boats. The participants must make group decisions on where to go, how they are going to get there, when to stop; and most importantly, each individual moves outside their comfort zone and into their optimal learning zone as they navigate the waterways under direct staff supervision. This is a place where youth feel comfortable to try new things knowing that they are going to be safe. The kayaks allow the youth explore beaches and waterways that are only accessible by boat and to learn about their environment and themselves in a new and exciting ways.

Our staff guide youth in their journey to improve communications skills, a lasting spirit of cooperation, and a commitment to shared goals. Through this facilitated processing, the participants are able to identify what has been learned and how they can apply that value to their lives.

LEVEL THREE

Adventure Wilderness Trip

This is a 3-5 day camping trip to a Texas State Park. On this trip youth apply everything that they have learned in the previous levels of our program. Under the direct supervision of trained and certified staff youth set-up/take down camp, cook/clean up after meals and assist with the prepping of equipment. They also choose a “leader” and a “navigator” to share the half-day responsibility of leading the group on hikes, swimming, kayaking routes, rock climbing and camp chores. This is the highly anticipated activity for the entire program. By this time we have seen tremendous growth in the youth and have instilled within them a desire to play outside and make better choices.

Youth also learn about natural consequences in our programs. If you choose not to put up your tent on a cloudy night, you may be soaking wet come morning. If you listen to your team during the Portable Team Challenges then you may get to be elected leader for a half-day during the camping trip. These little light bulb lessons teach wonders.

Youth Odyssey provides all equipment and supplies for each trip. Basic camp craft, hiking, and backpacking are taught on each trip. Youth are also introduced to the concept of environmental stewardship through “Leave No Trace” ethics. This concept teaches an acceptance of personal responsibility for maintaining the health and beauty of the natural environment. Each trip in The Adventure Wilderness Trip Program includes at least two of the following challenge activities:

  • Camping
  • Hiking/Backpacking
  • Fishing
  • Canoeing/ Kayaking
  • Rock Climbing/Bouldering

Activities during the Adventure Wilderness Trip provide “challenge” and encourage youth to stretch themselves beyond their self-imposed limits through facing that challenge. Challenge activities encourage the evolution of judgment, personal responsibility, and awareness of group needs. Youth Odyssey programs challenge youth in ways that help them discover talents and resources within themselves. The activities build on success and achievement, to encourage youth to assume responsibility and to develop the six core life skills promoted on each trip. Each activity during the trip includes reflection, evaluation and goal review to help the youth derive meaning from what they have experienced and how the experiences apply to their lives. After dinner around the evening campfire the team processes the day’s activities, personal and team goals, and plans for the next day.

LEVEL FOUR

Graduation Ceremony with Parents!

Designed by the youth.