ABSTRACT

Wilderness Discovery (WD) is a seven-day wilderness experience program specifically designed for youth-at-risk in the Federal Job Corps to enhance their self esteem, cooperation and social skills in support of their on-going education and job training. Under funding from the Department of Labor and the US Forest Service, Wilderness Discovery was tested in a two year pilot program at three Job Corps Centers in the Northwest during the summer of 1994 and 1995. The Atlanta Job Corps Center was added in 1995 to test the program at an eastern, urban center, taking students to wilderness in the Natahala National Forest in western North Carolina and the Cherokee National Forests in eastern Tennessee.

The students at the Atlanta Job Corps, primarily young black women, many with children, posed a new challenge to Wilderness Discovery, since nearly all of them were from intense urban environments and had never been exposed to wilderness. They were placed in an unfamiliar environment, far from their accustomed culture, and asked to complete difficult communal tasks as well as hiking with a 30 pound backpack.

Program effects were evaluated using student journal entries, exit interviews, and focus group interviews with steering committees of Job Corps staff. Steering Committee consensus opinions provided a basis for analyzing the potential economic benefits of WD using a benefit/cost model developed by Mathematica (1982), with analysis indicating positive returns from Wilderness Discovery as an adjunct to the Federal Job Corps Program.

Introduction

Wilderness Discovery (WD) is a seven-day wilderness experience program specifically designed to empower and strengthen the skills and motivation of youth-at-risk in the Federal Job Corps. We tested Wilderness Discovery in a pilot program during which we ran 45 trips from 1993-1995 at four different Job Corps Centers including: Curlew Job Corps Center on the Colville National Forest in Washington, 1993-95; Trapper Creek Job Corps Center on the Bitteroot National Forest in Montana, 1994-95; Timberlake Job Corps Center on the Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon, 1994-1995; and the downtown Atlanta Job Corps, 1995, run by the Management Training Corporation, under contract to the Department of Labor. This presentation describes our experience running six Wilderness Discovery trips from Atlanta during the Summer of 1995, taking groups of primarily young black women to wilderness in the Natahala and Cherokee National Forests in North Carolina and Tennessee.

Job Corps is a flagship program of the Federal Department of Labor, where, at more than 130 residential centers nationwide, unemployed young people aged 16-24 can receive vocational and educational training. Students may remain in the program for two years, during which they can earn a GED certificate and be trained in social and living skills as well as carpentry, construction, building maintenance, nursing, clerical applications, and many other vocations. Wilderness Discovery is designed to supplement Job Corps’ training with a soft skills, low-stress, low-risk wilderness experience designed to improve self esteem, cooperation, and social skills to empower and strengthen the ongoing training students are already receiving.

The focus of the wilderness experience is a 20-25 mile, seven-day backpacking trip, including camping for six nights on the trail, sharing of camp and cooking chores, and completing some wilderness trail work to show appreciation for use of the wilderness by the group. Contact with the wilderness is emphasized by using tarps for shelter in lieu of tents, no flashlights or watches to foster living by natural rhythms, and a primarily vegetarian, low-sugar diet.

The young women at the Atlanta Job Corps, many with children, posed a new challenge to Wilderness Discovery, with nearly all of them being from intense urban environments without any previous exposure to wilderness. We were pleasantly surprised at how well they liked the experience, and the positive impact it seemed to have on them.

Wilderness Discovery in Atlanta

The downtown Atlanta Job Corps Center has about 400 students, with approximately 90 percent being African American women, aged 16-24. We brought Wilderness Discovery to Atlanta to test the effects of a wilderness experience program on inner-city minority youth, many of whom had not been outside an urban environment. Wilderness on the Natahala and Cherokee National Forests was only 200 miles away on a map, but represented a world of difference to these young women. Wilderness Discovery placed them in an unfamiliar environment, far removed from their accustomed culture, where they were faced with completing difficult communal tasks, requiring substantial cooperation and social skills, as well as the rigors of hiking with a 30 lb. backpack.

The students had no prior wilderness experience, but quickly fell into the routine of living and traveling in balance with the natural world. Group circles were conducted daily, giving students a chance to speak out and for leaders to assess how they were doing individually and as a group. The opportunity to practice social skills in a neutral environment was a powerful experience for many students. Fears, hopes, dreams, and goals were shared with the group in a non-threatening setting. A community ethic evolved, and the group became a family. Completion of the trip culminated with discussions of what they had learned, and what metaphors could be taken back to their daily lives on center. After the tears and the hugs, the students returned to Atlanta to face the same challenges they had left-- for many, the responsibility of caring for young children, as well as school and vocational training to prepare for work and a more productive life.

We were interested in how the Wilderness Discovery program might affect students. What did they learn? How did it affect their social skills? Did completing Wilderness Discovery enhance self esteem--and if so, how might that be a positive influence on their lives, and society? We analyzed student journals, post-trip exit interviews, and debriefed every trip with a WD Steering Committee of Job Corps staff. At the end of the summer, we completed a focus group process with WD Steering Committees at each center to elicit a consensus of expert judgments about the perceived benefits of WD. Following is a summary of the results from this study looking at the effects of Wilderness Discovery on the students at the Atlanta Job Corps, and comparing the findings where appropriate with results from the other three centers where we tested the program.

Students were given journals and asked to keep a record of their experience during the seven-day back-packing trip. We gave them time during layover days and after meals, when they could think about pressing issues in their lives and record their thoughts. We knew from an earlier study that many students would record important thoughts, ideas and reflections, but some students would write very little and record few reflective insights (Pitstick, 1995). So we made a word count of each student journal, and counted the number of "reflective comments"--that is journal entries reflecting student insights into their lives and behavior (see Table 1).

Table 1: Average number of words per-day, per-student and number of reflective comments per-student per-trip in student for 1995 Wilderness Discovery participants at four Job Corps Centers

Analysis of these data revealed that Wilderness Discovery participants from Atlanta wrote 70 words per day, on the average, about 30 percent more in their journals than averaged by students from the other three centers--and had about 60 percent more reflective comments over the duration of the trip. One might speculate that students writing and recording more words and reflective comments could be due to trip itineraries and WD leadership, but with similar schedules and activities and consistently trained leaders at each center, this doesn’t seem likely. We then looked at gender, thinking that if women students at all centers wrote more words and reflective comments than men, that would account for the fact that the predominantly all women trips at Atlanta averaged more words and reflective comments per student than did the mixed gender trips at the other centers. This proved to be partially true. Female Job Corps students at all centers wrote more words in their journals per-day than male students, but the Atlanta women still averaged more reflective comments. What the data suggests then is that these urban, young black women responded like all other female students in taking advantage of the chance to write in their journals, and were inspired to even more reflections on the wilderness experience and how it related to their lives.

But even the numerical data do not reflect the richness of many insights offered by these young women in response to their wilderness experience. Consider the following journal entries from the Atlanta participants in WD:

"I am setting my dreams on the stars and reaching for all that is in me and I am hoping to find the sunlight as I work at it day-by-day. I want it this way. I have learned a lot about myself on this trip. I’ve discovered what I truly want out of my life and the ways I am going to use to make this happen."

Or this poem from a student reflecting on her wilderness discovery:

Discovery"

Or the personal insight into behavior from a young woman seeing a metaphor unfold before her in the beauty of nature:

"Today I watched the water and the rocks. The rocks block the water so the water flows around the rocks. The water and the rocks are working together. We are like the water and the rocks. Some of us are hard like rocks, and other people have to go around us. But we can work together. We are like the water and the rocks."

Thus, the journals captured many stories, dreams, reflections and metaphors from the student participants who had adequate reading and writing skills to truly express their feelings about what they learned, and their response to the wilderness.

At the conclusion of the trip, each student responded to questions about their Wilderness Discovery experience, in a private recorded interview. These interviews prompted stories of pride in achievement, positive feelings about themselves and the group, and 100 percent of them said they thought Wilderness Discovery was a good program for Job Corps (see Table 2).

Students were asked if they had ever experienced backpacking or been in wilderness before. Ninety-two percent of WD participants in Atlanta had never been backpacking before, compared to 70-81 percent at other centers (see Table 2).

Table 2: Average responses to exit interviews at the conclusion of each trip for 1995 Wilderness Discovery trip at four Job Corps Centers

These data, like the data from student journals, confirm a positive response to the wilderness experience by the young, urban minority women from Atlanta, along with students from other centers--despite lack of backpacking experience. This quote from a young woman in Atlanta sums up many of these positive responses to the question of employing WD as an adjunct program to Job Corps:

"Definitely, a lot of people come to Job Corps because they have nowhere else to go. This is the bottom for them....out here they have the time to think and they realize that Job Corps is a really good program....it gives them time to think about what they want.... I think this trip has helped everybody."

We think the intense juxtaposition of the wilderness experience with their accustomed urban culture prompted reflective insights by Atlanta students, and which could apply to their daily lives as metaphors. Ninety-two percent of the Atlanta participants stated they were going to apply the lessons learned from WD to their daily lives, a noticeably higher percentage than the other three centers (see Table 2). Their insights included comments such as:

· "The fact of being responsible for myself and also for others."

· "This brought me an inner peace I didn’t know I had. I was never able to get along with people. Out here it has done a lot of good."

· "It is gonna affect me in a positive way. It has given me a lot of strength and I feel I can survive when I leave this center on my own, doing things on my own. I don’t have to depend on nobody. I know that I can cause I have it in my heart and this was a test to prove that I can do it on my own without any help."

· "Spend some time alone when I get frustrated instead of yelling."

· "Self esteem and motivation that I learned up here."

· "Peace of mind and some confidence."

Focus Groups of Job Corps Staff

At the end of the summer, a focus group process was used with WD Steering Committees to develop consensus, expert judgments by Job Corps staff about their perceived affects of Wilderness Discovery on students. These Job Corps staff had followed Wilderness Discovery throughout the summer, and they represented the major program areas on Center, such as vocational training, education, counseling, residential living, administration, recreation, nursing, and others.

Within 24 hours of the conclusion of each trip at every center, the Wilderness Discovery leaders met with their respective steering committee to debrief the trip. Each student and the group as a whole was discussed in detail as to performance, noteworthy behavior or incidents and what was working well and not so well in the WD program, so changes could be made if necessary.

The Job Corps staff on the WD Steering Committees were professionals in working with youth-at-risk, and collectively were familiar with the student histories prior to entering Job Corps and prior to participating in Wilderness Discovery. They had the chance to see and evaluate student changes in attitude and behavior after participating in WD. Thus, we wanted to test Wilderness Discovery’s value against their consensus opinion.

At the focus group session, the WD Steering Committees at each center were asked to explore the benefits of Wilderness Discovery from their perspectives. The following list of benefits emerged in response to a group discussion to the question: What were the benefits of Wilderness Discovery to the students who participated, compared to those who did not participate, in Wilderness Discovery? Table 3 presents the benefits that emerged from the focus group discussions at each center.

Table-3: Benefits to students participating in Wilderness Discovery identified by WD Steering Committee members of Job Corps staff at each center, 1995.

Benefit/Cost Analysis

We then asked each focus group how they thought these perceived benefits might affect a students’ likelihood to complete their Job Corps training and gain future employment, (which is the main goal of Job Corps), and would effect the four other critical variables that form the heart of a benefit/cost model developed for Job Corps by Mathematica (1982) to assess the economic impact of Job Corps. Each focus group developed a consensus opinion recorded on a seven-point scale, as to what extent they thought WD affected the participants:’(compared to non-participants) (1) likelihood to terminate Job Corps early; (2) future employability; (3) dependence on welfare; (4) criminal behavior; and, (5) drug and alcohol use. Figure 1 shows, that at each center, focus groups judged that WD had a positive effect collectively on all these critical variables, and that after giving their initial response and then discussing it, the consensus final judgment was even more positive at each center.

Figure 1: Average for all WD Steering Committee consensus responses across four participating Job Corps Centers to four questions based on variables the Mathematica (1982) model*

*Seven point Likert scale ranging from: {1-Strongly Disagree-----4-Neutral-----7-Strongly Agree}

The results of the simulation indicate that by slightly adjusting individual and multiple variables, an adjustment we perceive to be justified by the focus group judgments of Job Corps staff, positive returns in the form of net social benefits can be realized. (See Figure 2).

Figure 2: Dollar increase in net social benefits from multiple variable adjustments

Based on these positive judgments, we made a very modest 5 percent positive adjustment for the five benefit variables and ran the benefit/cost model to determine net social benefits from these adjustments. We think the overall process leading to increased social/economic benefits from participating in Wilderness Discovery works this way (see Figure 3).

Since we estimate we can run Wilderness Discovery for variable costs of $370 per student over a ten-trip schedule, coupled with the simulated increase in returns of between $470 and $740 per student based on our modest projections, the financial returns of WD as an adjunct to Job Corps ($100-$370 per student) seem financially justified--under the assumptions and methods of this study (Russell, 1996).

Conclusions

Our analysis of student journals, exit interviews, and a focus group process with WD steering committees of Job Corps staff all support the notion that Wilderness Discovery is a positive adjunct to the on-going vocational, educational, and social skills training that Job Corps students are already receiving. This was true at an eastern, urban center serving minority female students, as well as at three mixed gender western centers. Students are returning from WD with a clarified purpose of why they are in Job Corps and with an increased awareness of their behavior and how it affects other people. The students liked Wilderness Discovery and endorsed its value. Many student journals and exit interviews revealed rich insights about why they are in job Corps, who they are and their goals. Consistent with other studies (Pitstick, 1995), WD is perceived by Job Corps staff familiar with the program to be targeting skills that will help students remain in Job Corps longer and enhance their employability.

The WD Steering Committees of Job Corps staff, through a focus group process, identified many benefits emerging in WD participants and we were able to relate these benefits to critical variables in the Mathematica (1983) benefit/cost model. WD by providing the chance for insights, practical experience in cooperation and social skills, and to enhance self esteem, is likely to increase the retention rate of students, which furthers their social development and performance in educational and vocational training. Studies by Mathematica (1983) show that completing Job Corps leads to increased future employability. This leads to a reduction in: (1) criminal activity; (2) drug and alcohol abuse; and, (3) dependency on welfare.

Thus, WD as an adjunct to Job Corps, has the potential to increase benefits to society through the enhanced productivity of Job Corps students--an increase that our simulation suggests would well exceed the cost of providing Wilderness Discovery. Finally, our study at Atlanta indicates that WD can be a positive experience for inner-city, female minority students, as well as for students from the rural Job Corps centers in the West.

References and Publications by the Wilderness Research Center

Friese, G.T., Pittman, J.T., & Hendee, J.C. (1996). Studies of the Use of Wilderness for Personal Growth, Therapy, Education, and Leadership Development: An Annotation and Evaluation. Available from Wilderness Research Center, Moscow, Idaho 83843. ($30)

Friese, G.T. (1996). A Typology and Survey of Wilderness Experience Programs Nationwide. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Idaho, Moscow.

Gager, D. (1996). Federal Land Managers Policies and Managers Perceptions on the Use of Wilderness for Personal Growth. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Idaho, Moscow.

 

Hendee, J.C. & Pitstick, R. (1993). The Use of Wilderness for Personal Growth and Inspiration. In Martin, V.G. Ed. Artic Wilderness. Proceedings of the 5th World Wilderness Congress, Tromso, Norway. WILD Foundation, 2162 Baldwin Road Ojai, CA 93023

Kale, M., (1994, Jan./Feb.). Wilderness and the Human Spirit. (Jan.-Feb.) American Forests pp. 39-43.

Mathematica Policy Research. (1985). Job corps process analysis. (Report no. 99-4-805- 75-064-01) Washington, DC: Author.

Mathematica Policy Research. (1982). Evaluation of the economic impact of the Job Corps program. (Report no. 23-34-76-06). Washington DC: U. S. Department of Labor.

Pitstick, R. (1995) The Meaning and Effects of a Seven-Day Wilderness Experience Program for Youth-at-Risk at the Curlew Job Corps Center on the Colville National Forest (Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of Idaho, 1995)

 

Pitstick, R., Hendee, J.C. & Lantier, I. (1993). The Wilderness Discovery Program for Poverty Youth in the U.S. Forest Service--Curlew Job Corps Conservation Center on the Colville National Forest. In: Hendee, J. C. & Martin V. G. International Wilderness Allocation, Managemnt, and Research. Proceedings Symposium of the 5th World Wilderness Congress, Tromso, Norway. WILD Foundation, 2162 Baldwin Road Ojai, CA 93023 (pp.217-221)

Russell, K. C. (1996). Potential Social and Economic Contributions of Wilderness Discovery as an Adjunct to the Federal Job Corps Program. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Idaho, Moscow.