Newcastle Permanent Charitable Foundation Beneficiary - July 2006 Outward Bound

Aspiring Leaders Project

Outward Bound Australia (OBA) is an independent, not for profit, professional Registered Training Organisation aimed at providing the chance to discover the “strength within” for young people, with a strong emphasis on developing life experiences.

OBA was established in Australia in 1956 and employs around 100 full time staff across Australia. There are more than 4,500 OBA course participants each year equating to approx 50,000 participant course days per year.

Funds were sought to establish the Hunter Youth Aspiring Leaders program. The aim of this program is to provide the foundation building blocks for the development of young leaders in our community. The course is run over 7 days at Outward Bound’s National Base in Canberra. The program is open to young people aged 16-18 acknowledged as aspiring leaders by their teachers/schools/communities from Maitland, Cessnock, Singleton and Muswellbrook. Each program is open to 15 participants and it is expected that 4 individual programs would be run each year.

The premise of the program is to develop a local team of proactive, skilful, ethical and community minded young leaders. The program also aims to review ethical leadership theory, develop practical leadership through individual and group leadership challenges, develop strong goal setting techniques, build self confidence and self esteem, for participants to take active responsibility for decisions and outcomes and for participants to engage in and value community service.

Our funds will be used to promote the program, source potential participants and subsidise the fees paid by participants.