Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) Information

Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT), a project of Earth Island Institute, was founded with the idea that California’s bountiful wilderness areas are a vast resource for local youth-serving organizations. BAWT promotes use of national, state and regional parks through our professional wilderness leadership training. Then, we connect teachers and youth workers to our outdoor gear libraries. That way, youth organizations and schools outfit their groups for trips of their own – free of charge! We believe that well led trips to granite cliffs, isolated beaches and ancient redwoods provide youth with powerful, life changing experiences. Bay Area Wilderness Training’s mission is to create opportunities for youth from the San Francisco Bay Area to experience wilderness first hand. To achieve our mission, we train teachers and youth workers, provide outdoor gear loans, give financial support, and foster community collaboration. Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) envisions a world where all youth have access to the wilderness. We believe that youth, once exposed to the wilderness, have a broadened sense of themselves, one another, and the world around them and are better prepared to lead social and environmental change. Four core values guide BAWT’s work: Diversity: We purposefully engage with a diverse community of teachers and youth workers to ensure all of these leaders are better prepared to lead youth from an increasingly diverse San Francisco Bay Area. Risk: We foster the virtues of positive, calculated risk-taking and provide the tools necessary to engage in such activities safely. Environmental Stewardship: Our leadership trainings ensure that teachers and youth workers have the skills necessary to lead responsible outdoor trips and to cultivate an environmental ethic in the youth they serve. Relationships: We seek to build a culture of the outdoors that echoes throughout communities by building relationships with existing community leaders.