Top Five Reasons Why You Should Run an Awareness Workshop

Jackson, Wyoming: Wilderness Adventures has trips all over the country and world for pre-teens to college students.  With over 80 instructors and 600 participants taking trips down rivers, up mountains, through canyons, and various forests throughout the country, we are proud to have them as an educational partner at Leave No Trace. Last weekend we had the privilege to put on a four-hour awareness workshop for all 80 instructors on how to teach their participants to minimize their impact when they are traveling and camping in the outdoors. Working with WA got us thinking about how important and rewarding it can be to facilitate an awareness workshop for any Master Educators, Trainer, or anybody who is enthusiastic about Leave No Trace.

Here are the top 5 reasons why you should put on an awareness workshop for your community or program. 

1.     You will not only be impacting the people at the workshop with the Leave No Trace message, but you will also know that they will pass it on to their friends, family, and colleagues.

2.     Without dedicated people to teach awareness workshops, the Leave No Trace message only has a limited reach through signage, social media, websites, and literature.

3.     Through experts in certain activities or regions, the Leave No Trace message can be catered to meet certain needs in your area. If you are having trouble with trail conflicts among hikers, bikers, and horseback riders, host an awareness workshop for these groups to learn how to work together.  If there is an increase in fire related impacts among a certain troop, camp, or organization, offer to host a workshop to focus what impacts are effecting your area.

4.     Kids are the future! Taking the time to teach a scout group, school, or youth organization can teach kids to enjoy the outdoors responsibly.

5.     Lastly, awareness workshops are fun! Teaching and interacting with people from your community in either an outdoor setting or a classroom will be an enjoyable and inspiring experience. If you make it interactive and fun everyone will learn more and appreciate the message.

Use the following links to help facilitate your next awareness workshop.

·      Awareness Workshop Guidelines

·      How to Run an Awareness Workshop

·      Awareness Workshop Reporting

·      Awareness Workshop Training Certificate

Thanks for reading and remember to be like the Center’s mascot Bigfoot and Leave No Trace.

Pat and TJ – Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainer West Central Team

Leave No Trace’s Patrick and Theresa Beezley are part of the 2015 Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainer Program that provides free, mobile education to communities across the country. Proud partners of this program include Subaru of America, Deuter, Hi-Cone, REI, Smartwool, The North Face, and Yakima.