Heading for the summit

Equip Mentors Amber and Philippa before heading for the hills with Harris Primary Pupils

This was the first residential activity of the new two-year educational partnership between Equip Outdoor Technologies UK, owners of the Rab and Lowe Alpine brands and the outdoor educational charity, The Outward Bound Trust.

A total of 59 pupils, along with six Harris Primary teachers and two Equip Employee Ambassadors, Philippa Hill and Amber Brown, were guided through challenging experiential learning activities by Outward Bound instructors.

The pupils were intentionally mixed up into groups of 11 or 12 to promote teamwork, independence and listening skills. One particularly challenging day saw the pupils putting their teamwork skills into action as they rowed and canoed together across Ullswater in the choppy water at force 4 winds.

Both Equip Employee Ambassadors, Amber and Philippa have been involved in the Harris Primary program from the start. During the residential week, they took part in all the wilderness challenges whilst encouraging and mentoring their groups. For Amber, her magic moment was “when we went gorge scrambling and seeing the kids work together to progress up the gorge. Even though they tried to push me into the water at the end!”

Philippa was greatly impressed with her group when after a very long tough uphill hike through the mountains they reached the top of Gowbarrow Fell. She explains: “it was a perfect sunny day but there were some tears but also plenty of smiles from my group but all shared a massive sense of achievement at reaching the top.”

All activities embedded the course vision: to recognize the value of working well together in a team. All participants agree that this was truly achieved.

Equip Corporate Social Responsibility Manager Debbie Read explains “A partnership like this are a great chance to remind our employees why we work in the outdoor industry. Inspiring a future generation to enjoy the outdoors and bringing that energy back into the workplace through our employee ambassadors is an experience we can all benefit from at Equip.”

Year 5 pupils are aged 8/9 or 9/10. Year 6 pupils are aged 9/10 or 10/11.