YCLC - Home Page

The YCLC Program ... a weekend- long role-playing game of outdoor fun and challenge - offering through the powerful tool of discovery-based learning, a striking opportunity for youth to discover - from within themselves - "their own person."

A YCLC reads as non-stop adventure - with challenges like to those seen on television's Survivor - but with a vastly different result - everyone survives, thrives, and has fun in the process.

Eight years in the design, a YCLC combines the top research-tested "best practices" of psychology, sociology, participatory theatre, leadership training, ropes-course training, and simulation gaming to create a lively role-playing game in which youth play medieval characters seeking to graduate into knighthood (and its

female equivalent).

Participants engage in surprise challenges that are seamlessly blended into a weekend long heroic, mythical adventure - in search of a hidden treasure which will save their community.

The Results!

Participants arrive at the final event, Sunday afternoon, with a new set of relational skills which easily and immediately transfer to everyday life within their peer group - spontaneity, flexibility, resilience, self-respect appreciation for the diversity of others, articulateness and initiative.

Such results are rarely seen in youth programs. But they have been demonstrated repeatedly in the well- researched positive youth development programs from which we have drawn our methodology. Bullies jettison bullying in favour of leadership. Bullied youth come out of hiding and contribute what they have been afraid to put forth. Youth-at-risk rediscover a place for themselves in the mainstream. Tested a year later, youth, even those who have done nothing else to enhance their results, are seen to be resilient, confident, thriving - and to be enjoying the challenges which life sends their way.

Who can come?
All youth ages 10-19 easily fit into the mix (where else have you seen 10 year olds and 19 year olds get along together) - those who are thriving already, those who are struggling, those with disabilities, those from all cultures and religions. Much well-intentioned effort today goes into segregating youth, based on their differences. We don't think this works! How will these youth thrive as adults in a multiethnic and multilinguistic society unless an opportunity such as this comes along where it become fun and natural to relate to those who are different from themselves?

We are for breaking barriers - not solidifying them.

Our Mission

YCLC Canada Inc. works to help community-based groups bring a YCLC to youth in their community - and to train their own leaders - so that the program becomes theirs. Our long term goal is to spread the YCLC across Canada with service clubs and government organizations as long term partners. We welcome adult members of the community, who are interested in seeing that this generation of youth prosper, to help us deliver future YCLCs .

WE HAVE CAPTURED YCLC ON VIDEO - SEE IT

! (no special plug-ins needed)
A DETAILED DECRIPTION OF THE MAKE-UP OF THE PROGRAM APPEARS