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The British Exploring Society
For questions 1-6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think best fits according to the text.
Expeditions that give young people from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance to change their lives
Iceland is a place where man takes second place to geology. Even for a frontier expedition, the alien landscape is inhospitable, the stark grey of solidified lava and rock stretching up the mountain to a patch of dirty snow. The dark mood of the valley landscape before us is lifted only by a lone Icelandic sheep and the green mosses that harness the Arctic light. Two hours' drive from Akureyi airport, an off-road track leads to the British Exploring Society (BES) base camp, the springboard for a series of tough missions in northwest Iceland that will see the adventurers travel close to 125 miles on a three-week expedition.
But the adventurers here are a little special. They are with the Dangoor Next Generation (DNG) programme, run by the BES, aimed at young people who are not in employment, education or training. Expeditions of this kind are not the preserve of adventurers and record-setters: they can also be used as a powerful tool to 'change lives', and the three-month training programme, run in partnership with the youth charity Catch 22 and followed by the three-week expedition, has seen extraordinary results. Ninety-four per cent of the young people involved are in employment or training within three months of returning from an expedition.
As Caroline Hodges, the DNG programme manager, says, 'These are young people who have never owned passports, may not have parents around, and play computer games all the time. The potential to broaden their horizons is massive.' The 39 adventurers, all aged under 21, are split into four groups and learn to be self-sufficient in the wilderness: pitching their own tents, cooking outdoors and navigating themselves on a 50-mile trip over the Askja volcano during the coldest August the locals can remember. All have shown a willingness to step into the unknown and a perseverance that could change their lives for ever. For them this is truly another planet.
The BES (formally the British Schools Exploring Society) has run expeditions since 1932, when it was founded by George Murray Levick, a surgeon commander in the Royal Navy. A member of the northern party of Captain Scott's last expedition, he spent the 1911-12 Antarctic winter in a snow hole in darkness, where he dreamt up an educational body for young explorers. As he said, 'Unless we foster the spirit of adventure... we stand a good chance of losing it.' Today the range of expeditions includes biodiversity research in the Peruvian Amazon, studying polar climate change in the Arctic, and adventures in the Indian Himalayas, Oman, Namibia and Iceland.
We are into week two, the third day of the mountain section. After climbing Mt Sellandafjall, the nine adventurers in Team Bull are still going strong when I drop behind to speak to Neil Laughton, the inspirational chief leader. He is hiking with Adrian Taylor, the national project manager with Catch 22 and a social leader on the trip. 'Dependence to independence,' summarizes Laughton. 'Young people from difficult backgrounds often lack confidence, positive role models and the discipline to escape a downward spiral in society,' he says. Some have behavioural problems. They find out for the first time about the world beyond, what it takes to survive in the wilderness. A few drop out in the early stages (though fewer each year). They have to do something very challenging outside their comfort zone, which has a tremendous effect on self-confidence and self-esteem,' he says.
'The moments that mean the most in terms of personal development,' Hodges says, 'are when a young person walks away from a confrontation when previously they might have risen to the bait; or when one of them gets out of bed without a 25-minute debate, or helps his group by making dinner for the first time after having selfishly let them do everything for weeks - these are the little moments of triumph that our staff work hard for.'