Return to search

Lighting the Fire : Empowering Youth Towards Sustainability in Nature Camps

The scale of the sustainability crisis is mounting exponentially as human development pushes the socio-ecological system closer to its limits. 12 to 18 year olds, who are in a formative life stage, are critical stakeholders in the success of addressing this sustainability challenge. This study explores the role of nature camps as powerful platforms for empowering young people towards sustainability. It begins by creating a conceptual framework to identify, define and design youth empowerment towards sustainability (YES). This is then used to identify relevant current practices and activities in the field through qualitative interviews with nature camp practitioners. A focus group is held to trial the YES Framework and collect suggestions for designing camps. Through thematic analysis, five key themes are distilled which link outcomes of camps to addressing specific sustainability issues. The study concludes that nature camps already empower young people towards sustainability, though neither explicitly nor strategically. Based on these findings we see an excellent opportunity to bring together existing knowledge from the field, combined with the YES Framework, to support the creation of nature camps which can empower new generations of young people to engage in strategic sustainable development.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:bth-14511
Date January 2017
CreatorsDrossart, Kilia, Heckman, Stéphanie Alexandra, Tate Wistreich, Brendan
PublisherBlekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för strategisk hållbar utveckling, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för strategisk hållbar utveckling, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för strategisk hållbar utveckling
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Page generated in 0.0021 seconds