Nick's Long Walk || Pacific Crest Trail 2001

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A dynamic and unique approach to wilderness exploration for urban youth

Click here to visit the new BAWT website

Mission

The mission of Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) is to provide Bay Area youth service organization staff with professional wilderness leadership training and quality outdoor equipment, so these adult leaders may safely lead youth in exploring the power and beauty of California's wilderness.

Wilderness Leadership Training and Quality Outdoor Equipment

BAWT's major program activity is a dynamic 5-day workshop known as the Wilderness Leadership Training (WLT): a comprehensive experiential training to prepare an adult youth worker to take groups of young people on outdoor adventure trips. It entails an initial orientation, a five-day training workshop, and an optional follow-up day long trip-planning workshop. BAWT will run three open enrollment WLT courses in the spring of 2001 as well as one in the fall. In addition, BAWT is running one-day teambuilding, map and compass and trip-planning support workshops as well as a weekend long Wilderness First Aid course for new and past participants. Click here to learn more about the Wilderness Leadership Training.

BAWT also maintains an equipment room that contains all of the equipment needed to take a group safely on a wilderness trip. The equipment room is sustained, in part, through donations of equipment by local and national gear companies such as Patagonia and REI. All youth workers who complete the WLT have access to the equipment room free of charge, which allows youth workers to run their trips at a very low cost. In fact, BAWT conservatively estimates that it has saved youth agencies and schools more than $53,000 in expenses related to renting gear! Click here to learn more about equipment loan program.

A Brief History

Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) was started in January 1998, using the proven model of the 30 year old Youth Opportunities Program in Boston (a program of the Appalachian Mountain Club). It was founded on the belief that training adult youth workers is the best way to parlay their expertise in outdoor recreation into serving youth.

In April of 1999 BAWT proudly became a fiscally sponsored project of the Earth Island Institute. Earth Island Institute, founded by David Brower, is an umbrella organization that supports organizations that foster the appreciation, conservation, and preservation of the Earth's biosphere.

Through our first two seasons of Wilderness Leadership Trainings, and numerous one day support workshops, BAWT has trained close to 100 youth workers. Subsequently more than 600 youth have made it outdoors... many camping under the stars for the first time.

Nick's Long Walk is a major effort - both for Nick and the staff and volunteers at BAWT. Through this effort we hope to dramatically raise the number of individuals committed to the organization and its mission, as donors, volunteers and clients.

The Earth Island Istitute
Bay Area Wilderness Training is a project of The Earth Island Istitute

Click here to visit the EII website

Mission

Life on Earth is imperiled by human degradation of the biosphere. Earth Island Institute develops and supports projects that counteract threats to the biological and cultural diversity that sustain the environment. Through education and activism, these projects promote the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the Earth.

Origins and Purpose

Earth Island Institute (EII), founded in 1982 by veteran environmentalist David Brower, fosters the efforts of creative individuals by providing organizational support in developing projects for the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the global environment. EII provides activists the freedom to develop program ideas, supported by services to help them pursue those ideas, with a minimum of bureaucracy.

Earth Island's Project Network consists of more than 30 projects worldwide. Through innovative education and activist campaigns, we are addressing many of the most pressing social and environmental issues:

Protecting rainforests, marine mammals, sea turtles, and indigenous lands

Promoting organic and sustainable agriculture, ecological paper alternatives, and the emerging Russian environmental movement

Pursuing community-based habitat restoration, reduction of marine pollution, and development of urban multicultural environmental leadership

The John Muir Project (Earth Island Institute)

Click here to visit the JMP website

The John Muir Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to placing all federal public forest lands in the United States beyond the reach of commercial exploitation, just as John Muir envisioned over a century ago. Our immediate goal is to end all timber sales on federal public lands nationwide and redirect the timber subsidies into worker retraining, ecological restoration, and reduction of the national debt.