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World Bound Youth and Young Adult Climate Leadership Courses
World Bound is all about combining meaningful skill-building, leadership training, and outdoor adventure travel to support young people's resilience building and better understanding of our ever changing world. We do this by introducing youths to some of the most beautiful and fascinating locations in the world.
World Bound is not your typical youth adventure camp. We lead experiences that connect a young person to the “roots” of the people they meet, places they visit, and the experiences that shape their ever changing world. More importantly, our World Bound experiences connect youth with cutting-edge climate change education, whether examining glaciers, reducing our carbon footprint, conservation, and so much more.
A Personal Note on World Bound
“I have searched and searched for a stand-alone climate change education secondary school credit in the BC curriculum and across the world. There isn’t any. It doesn’t exist. I am dumbfounded that physics and calculus are stand-alone accredited courses taught from math and science departments. How did these courses become separate courses when climate change is buried in environmental science or social studies? I believe climate change education is more important at this point than calculus.
If we believe that climate change is a priority then our education system has to fundamentally make climate change education a priority. If we think our leadership has failed us, then we need to change the leadership model, direction and priorities. If we believe our kids are disconnected from the land and lack a relationship with nature - then we need to create more capacity and opportunities to be outside while also unplugging them.
As a father, my kids will enter into their local high school in a few years. Like most parents, we want our children to have more options to learn, express themselves and study climate change through an educational approach. As an outdoor educator and leadership instructor, it is time to rethink and reimagine our idea of leadership and our connections with nature. Education is the most powerful way to change society, create solutions and empower a generation.”
– Jeff Willis, father, outdoor educator, optimist.
Our World Bound Climate Change Curriculum
Our goal is to go beyond a typical summer camp experience, allowing all our adventurers return home able to understand, thrive, and take action in a world defined by climate change. Part of this is preparing them for their futures as students, employees, and activists, which is where the World Bound Curriculum comes in.
Our World Bound Curriculum is a set of place-based, outdoor-oriented educational modules that will inform this expedition. These modules are founded upon our five World Bound Pillars, created to uphold an educational environment where learners can acquire knowledge from multiple perspectives, deeply internalize that knowledge by connecting it to their own experiences, and be empowered to transform their knowledge and experiences into life-long action. Here are those Pillars:
Pillar One: Integrating Climate Change Principles and Perspectives
Pillar Two: Exploring Real-world Environments
Pillar Three: Volunteering and Connecting in Communities
Pillar Four: Practicing Life, Social, and Leadership Skills
Pillar Five: Sustaining Climate Action
Part of our mission for World Bound is encapsulated by the World Bound Guarantee: that this is an experience that doesn’t end when you get home. Being part of World Bound means being part of a global network of future expeditions, internships, and post-secondary and career opportunities.
For more detailed information about the curriculum, please visit our World Bound Curriculum page.
Explore our 2024 World Bound Youth climate leadership courses
July 1–21 and July 23–Aug 12, 2024 (21 days) | Ages: 13–18 (co-ed) | Vancouver, Whistler, Sechelt, Whitehorse, Fort Selkirk, Dawson City
Explore British Columbia’s beautiful West Coast before embarking on an incredible 700km Canoe trip down the Yukon River. Wilderness immersion, consultation with Indigenous knowledge keepers, and our innovative World Bound Climate Change Curriculum combine to deepen your relationship with yourself, your family, and the world.
Aug 1–21, 2024 (21 days) | 15–18 (co-ed) | Venice, Parco delle Dolomiti D'Ampezzo - Cortina, Parco regionale del fiume Sile, Parco Nazionale Dolomiti Bellunesi, Venezia e la sua Laguna (Venice’s North Lagoon), The River Piave, Treviso
Embark upon a breathtaking adventure in the Alps and the Dolomites. Explore a stunning yet peaceful region with pristine lakes and quaint little farms scattered among towering mountain peaks. Challenge yourself and your group to produce less than 50% of the average traveller’s carbon footprint while camping, sleeping in huts, and working with shepherds.
June 30–July 20, 2024 and July 23–August 12, 2024 | Ages: 13–18 (co-ed) | Tokyo, Osaka, Mount Fuji, Nara, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kobuchizawa, Yamanishi
This Japan adventure is a one-of-a-kind youth leadership course that infuses cutting-edge climate change education with Japanese cuisine and culture, world-renowned historical landmarks, technological innovation, and – most importantly – the people of Japan.
Date: Contact us to register interest | Ages: 14–18 (co-ed) | Quito (Ecuadorian capital), Otavalo (largest Indigenous settlement in Ecuador), Cuicocha (lagoon), Cochasqui (archaeological site), Cayambe (volcano), Cotopaxi, Napa River region.
Although Ecuador is one of the smallest countries in South America, it is also the country with the biggest heart. This World Bound location offers the greatest natural wonders for young people to explore and discover which makes it a “must visit” destination for fun and adventure. In Ecuador, youth can explore critically important rainforests, cross the dramatic slopes of the Andes, visit Indigenous communities, and paddle the waterways that feed the Amazon River.
Explore our 2024 World Bound Young Adult climate leadership courses
August 1–21, 2024 | Ages: 19–30 (co-ed) | Venice, Parco delle Dolomiti D'Ampezzo - Cortina, Parco regionale del fiume Sile, Parco Nazionale Dolomiti Bellunesi, Venezia e la sua Laguna (Venice’s North Lagoon), The River Piave, Treviso
Embark upon a breathtaking adventure in the Alps and the Dolomites. Explore a stunning yet peaceful region with pristine lakes and quaint little farms scattered among towering mountain peaks. Challenge yourself and your group to produce less than 50% of the average traveller’s carbon footprint while camping, sleeping in huts, and working with shepherds.
June 30–July 20, 2024 and July 23–August 12, 2024 | Ages: 19–30 (co-ed) | Tokyo, Osaka, Mount Fuji, Nara, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kobuchizawa, Yamanishi
This Japan adventure is a one-of-a-kind young adult climate leadership course that infuses cutting-edge climate change education with Japanese cuisine and culture, world-renowned historical landmarks, technological innovation, and – most importantly – the people of Japan.
An exclusive Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Experience
Fireside is proud to be one of two Duke of Edinburgh ‘Trained Activity Providers’ in Canada. The Duke of Edinburgh’s award is a powerful, internationally recognized tool for accelerating your journey into the world of post-secondary education, careers, self-confidence and independence. During any World Bound experience, you have the opportunity to achieve your Bronze, Silver, or Gold Adventurous Journey (both practice and qualifying), or your Gold Project and beyond. Click here to learn how to earn the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Those who are interested must notify us when registering.
Why World Bound?
All of us have memories of asking our parents or grandparents a particular question: “What was it like, back then?” It's an ancient question, letting the young connect with the old through shared memories of another time, another world. For most of us, it was a question that allowed us to sit with our beloved elders and compare their stories to our own, laughing and wondering at how different things are now.
It was a profound question, a treasured moment.
But what will this moment look like, in the not-too-distant future, when climate change has ravaged the world and made life immeasurably worse for every living thing?
What will future generations do with your memories of listening to the buzz of bees weaving through spring flowers? How will they feel about your stories of fresh air and clear skies beneath the warm summer sun? What will they think about your thrilling winter adventures on the ski slopes?
Will they still laugh and wonder with you?
Or will they ask, “And what did you, with all your resources, do to preserve that world for us?”
The most conscientious of you might say that you recycled, that you tried your best to eat less meat. Maybe some of you even bought an electric vehicle or installed solar panels on your home. As you sit together in a world of mass extinctions, summers choked by wildfire smoke, snowless winters without even glaciers left to melt, will they buy it?
Or will they ask, “Did you even try?”
“Of course!” you will protest, feeling like you probably couldn’t have done better, “The government didn’t do anything! Nobody knew what to do! We did everything we could!”
And when you look into the eyes of your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, will you see that they believe those words?
Will you believe them?
The truth is, we are part of the most privileged group of people that ever lived. We were born lucky, at the right time, into the right families, in the right countries. This means we are privileged enough to worry not about what we will eat, or where we will sleep, but about this future moment when younger generations ask us their hard questions.
This means that we are privileged enough to have to find answers.
The truth is, your privilege means that you are responsible for climate change. You have more than you should, so you must sacrifice more than you are comfortable with.
Going vegan just isn’t going to cut it.
How you start is by supporting the people whose lives are being impacted by your inaction right now – your children. You have to show them what they are fighting for: the wildlife that we are driving to extinction, the natural wonders that we are burning, the experiences we have all taken for granted. Nobody fights for other people’s memories of a long-dead world. Our youth must make their own memories, find their own motivation. After that, you have to show them how to fight.
The problem is, most of you don’t know how to do this, and neither do your children. How could you? You were never taught how.
But World Bound does know how to do this. World Bound has taught people how.
Here is what World Bound is prepared to give your children. We are prepared to show them a world worth sacrificing for. We are prepared to give them the skills and connections they need to take real climate action. We are prepared to guide them toward a better future, where they can look their children in the eyes and say, “I fought like hell”.
And what do we ask from you? Sacrifice, of course.
It’s easy to look at what we offer and say, “All that money for a summer camp? Ridiculous!” It’s easy to see $3,999 as a big investment with no return. But then, it has always been easy for the privileged to convince themselves that sacrifice isn’t worth as much as comfort.
What is harder is to resist that privileged viewpoint and see that World Bound is not a ‘summer camp’, but an entry point into the most important journey humanity has ever embarked on. What is harder is to invest in this journey even though it doesn’t bring you personal profit or prestige, even though you may not be there for the journey’s end.
It seems hard, but it’s really this simple:
Would you pay 1 dollar a day for the next twelve years so that you and your children could sit with future generations and tell them honestly that you sacrificed everything you could to make a better world for them?
If the answer is yes, then we invite you to join World Bound on this journey and give your children the tools they need to become the climate leaders that we all need.
