YES Club
Young Explorers Society Club
The Young Explorers Society Club (YES Club) is a fun weekend (monthly enrollment possibility) adventure education program designed to provide teens with what is most important to them, what they are most interested in, and to develop resiliency.
The Importance of Resiliency
Through longitudinal studies (studying, measuring, and following the progress of children over decades to adulthood), research has shown that the secret to success and the key to children becoming happy, healthy (physically and mentally) and prosperous adults is the development of high levels of resiliency during childhood.
People who are resilient can effectively cope with, or adapt to, stress and challenging life situations. They learn from the experience of being able to effectively manage a particular situation, making them better able to cope with stresses and challenges in future situations.
Resilience helps to establish morals, attitudes, beliefs, and proper values in an individual. It determines a person’s reaction or response to events or situations and defines behavior pattern choices and thinking styles and controls feelings.
7 C's To Becoming Resilient
Competence
- Competence is knowing how to handle challenging situations effectively. This requires having the skills to face, persevere and overcome challenges.
- The YES Club program curriculum offers challenging activities, new environments and opportunities for youth to develop new relationships. The program provides youth with the skills and training to engage in new activities and effectively handle challenges.
Confidence
- Confidence is rooted in competence, and is defined as the belief in one’s own abilities. Children gain confidence by being able to demonstrate their competence in real situations.
- The YES Club program enhances self confidence by providing competence based activities, thereby, providing opportunities to develop confidence. For example, speaking in front of a group, paddling a kayak or cooking a meal for others.
Connection
- Youth with close ties to friends, family, and educators are likely to have a stronger sense of security and sense of belonging.
- The YES Club establishes close bonds between the group members and educators. In the program, the participants will build new and highly valued friendships within the group and with the instructors.
Character
- Children with character have a strong sense of self-worth and confidence. They are in touch with their values and are comfortable sticking to these values even when it would be easier not to.
- The YES Club’s objective is to strengthen character through enhancing self-esteem by providing activities, opportunities and situations with unknown outcomes and results.
Contribution
- When children personally contribute to the world, they can learn the powerful lesson that the world is a better place because they are in it.
- In the YES Club, time is set aside to meet as a group where participants can explore and learn from each other. They will also learn how to contribute to the group, their family, community, city, country, and planet. We aim to develop the child’s understanding of how their actions or inactions have an impact on the world around them.
Coping
- Children who have a wide set of coping skills (social skills, stress reduction skills, etc.) have greater resilience and are able to cope more effectively and are better prepared to overcome life’s challenges.
- The YES Club program curriculum teaches youth how to learn from mistakes and setbacks along with how to change behaviors, actions and choices in order to succeed next time they are presented with a challenge.
Control
- When children realize that they have control over their decisions and actions, they are more likely to know how to make choices in a way that is best for them, enabling them to bounce back from life’s challenges.
- The YES Club program provides participants with thousands of choices as to how they wish to participate, think and act. This equally provides thousands of opportunities for participants to predict and assess the results of their choices based on the quality and correctness of these selections and actions. The continual dance, between choices and awareness of outcomes and consequences over time teaches youth that they are in control of their success and happiness.
Our Method
1. To Build Resiliency
- Establish personal values, attitudes, knowledge and behaviours
- Develop a clear sense of personal identity and a positive sense of self-worth and control over one’s life
- Foster the ability to form healthy relationships with others
- Find a valued place in the world and ways to be useful to others
- Develop lifelong learning habits and master social skills
- Create a sense of curiosity and exploration
- Acquire skills to participate in the economy and establish respect for diversity
2. Create a Safe and Positive Environment
The YES Club program provides a safe harbour where the participant is surrounded by teens and adults whose entire commitment is dedicated to being focused on positive choices, behaviours and values.
This environment provides the best, fastest and most harmonious way for youth to find their way forward to adulthood with a minimum of risk, disappointment and harm to themselves or their family along the way.
3. Increase Personal Growth through Challenges
When students are faced with unknown challenges, or uncertain outcomes, they have three choices:
- To withdraw and avoid any loss or discomfort and cutting off all growth and learning opportunities
- To charge blindly ahead with no regard for the consequences and risk getting harmed or harming others
- To seek out others and relationships that can offer wise counsel, mentorship, choices, friendship and activities, as a way forward to overcome challenges
The YES Club program creates and offers that third choice by providing safe harbour to improve and educate the students with the benefit of a minimum amount of exposure to risk, failure or harm.
Family Involvement
- Group logs, shared with parents, will be done each program day.
- VOS instructors work with each participant to establish a personal education plan for the program.
- Parents will be invited to contribute to the plan and make suggestions. The plan will be reviewed and updated every three months, and progress reports will be sent out as well.
- Parents are invited to attend activities when it is possible and suitable.
- Participants will make group presentations to families about their activities and successes. For example, a presentation about the trip with photos, video, and oral reports.
Find more about our Family Involvement Strategy
Year-long Plan (Monthly Enrollment Option)
YES Club Program Activities
Fees
Option 1
January to June (17 days in total)-
Includes all instruction, activity fees, food, accommodation, transportation and tax
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Does not include air flight travel cost, ski/snowboard lessons and rentals
Option 2
Monthly Enrolment (choose dates and activities)-
Includes all instruction, activity fees, food, accommodation, transportation and tax
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Does not include air flight travel cost, ski/snowboard lessons and rentals
For more information about each month and the included activities, please click the Activities & Challenges Schedule button above.
What To Bring
List of personal items will be provided after registration with joining instructions.
Group & Safety
Health and safety are always our priority. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to implement policies to protect our participants, including the requirement of triple vaccinations and rapid tests before trips for staff.
Do you have any questions about our YES Club program?
If you have not found all the information you need, please contact us. We are happy to answer all of your questions.