Consider taking a walk into a wooded area and using only nature’s surroundings to make a fire. Then try to build a primitive shelter to stay in for the night. It will also be important to scout the woods to discover edible and medicinal plants and bring them back to camp.  Plants found can make a great stew by cooking them inside a pumpkin with hot rocks pulled from a fire.  This experience may seem like an episode of the reality show “Man vs. Wild,” and it is part of a real-life leadership effort taking place in eastern Missouri.

Brett Bailey, director at Meramec Adventure Learning Ranch (http://www.meramecranch.org/), is part of a statewide program that works with at-risk youth to discover and capitalize on their strengths and inspire change in their perspective. As a Great Circle ® agency, Meramec offers experiential adventure and wilderness programs in an effective way to teach skills that are therapeutic in a real-life environment.

Meramec is one of the most extensive high adventure facilities in the Midwest. With a 28-element high ropes course, team development initiatives, zip lines, and an adventure lake, ranch programs utilize outdoor, adventure, and wilderness experiences to help participants focus on key attributes to make a positive impact in the world around them.

Bailey says camp attendees gain mastery of skills and demonstrate how efficacy can change their lives. Though many of the youth have faced extreme cases of abuse and neglect, Bailey says after they work through building a fire, lashing logs together, or conquering a 40-foot tower by climbing and rappelling, the camp is truly a catalyst for change.

“We believe no other place builds that integrity, service, and interdependence between individuals better than the outdoors,” Bailey says.  “It’s pretty neat to watch efficacy grow and translate that into concrete examples, or use the river as a metaphor for where they are in their journey of life.”

Meramec Adventure Learning Ranch offers programs ranging from a day trip to 8-14 day cottage trips designed to meet specific objectives for the group’s treatment goals. Each program works to inspire growth and efficacy while also placing participants into a state of disequilibrium. Bailey says when a person feels off balance, it is natural to reach out for something stable. Research and personal success stories have proven that working through nature’s survival challenges can inspire change in hard-wired responses. The combination of the outdoors and the idea of disequilibrium go hand-in-hand to make each group adventure a purposeful trip.

“We give youth the ability to recognize they have something unique and special to offer,” he says. “I believe that inspires a lot of purpose, which goes a long way toward developing efficacy and hope. Next, they can reconstruct perceptions of things that have happened in the past. They will say to themselves, ‘That experience wasn’t my choosing, but I can use it to make me into a better, stronger, healthier person.’”

One year ago, Bailey and his co-director, Kassey Odneal, discovered the talents of Next Element and brought Nate Regier and his team on board to develop an assessment that could track the progress and outcomes of the work at Meramec. After deep, thorough discussions of Meramec’s goals, objectives and programs, and an onsite visit, Regier certified Bailey and his team in NEOS®, an assessment program that tracks three attributes of effective functioning: openness, resourcefulness, and persistence. Next Element also offered training in self-efficacy and Process Communication® for portions of the Meramec team.

“Brett and Kassey are passionate, full of energy and have a deep commitment to their clients,” Regier says. “Our work has been primarily research-focused and we are  equipping the Meramec team to be intentional about the work they are doing around self-efficacy. The time we’ve spent with them to design a product that will measure the ranch’s progress and outcomes is very unique to their goals – it is not a cookie cutter approach.”  Bailey says Next Element has also taught them how to more effectively bridge the transfer-of-learning gap, which is essential to the work Meramec offers its young participants. He says with any adventure program, the biggest challenge is making an individual connect what they’ve learned, or the skill they’ve mastered, to a situation at home.

“The cool thing about Next Element is that they are geared to individual and team development,” he says. “They are focused on changing and inspiring growth in each individual, and that’s our focus as well. In some ways we are a different animal as there are not too many programs in the Midwest that do therapeutic expeditions for this type of at-risk youth. Next Element has experience working with all those things, both in the adventure realm and therapeutic realm. That was a big selling point for us.”

Building relationships and changing perspective which can inspire is what Meramec is all about. Bailey says he witnesses incredible success stories of the youth who’ve come through Meramec programs. At the end of each journey in the woods with a fire, primitive hut and edible plants and amazing youth, he gains more perspective each time.

“If we can inspire and facilitate a change in our kids’ perspectives through the growth of efficacy, then instead of viewing a mountain as too high or too big, they will see they have the ability to get over it,” he says.

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By Rhonda McCurry, Contract Writer