Back From Scotland! The First Encompass Journey of Understanding
On Saturday 17th September a group of young Indonesians, Brits, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans returned to London from the Loch Eil Outward Bound Centre in Scotland where they had been taking part in the First Encompass Journey of Understanding.
The program challenged the group both physically and emotionally. Using Outward Bound’s expertise, a program of activities encouraged the group to work as a team, helping to break down barriers and challenge preconceptions. This process was aided by the series of discussions, which was run concurrently. Each evening our trained facilitator led discussions which encouraged the participants to think about issues such as identity, stereotypes and conflict resolution.
The program was a real success and generated significant media interest- BBC Radio 4’s Open Country programme ran a half-hour feature on our program. However, more importantly, we are now looking forward to running our next program in association with Outward Bound. This will be in April 2006 and for the first time we will be welcoming a group of young Iraqis onto the program.
Hopefully with the continued support of our friends, we are looking forward to running more Encompass programs and bringing more young people together to build the links that we hope will go some way to preventing future conflicts.
Posted Thursday September 29, 2005
