David Jaensch presented an excellent overview of the Operation Flinders program that has been operating in South Australia for 30 years at the latest meeting of Charlton Women in Agriculture and Business.
He has volunteered for the organisation since 2011, beginning as a paramedic and then progressing to a team leader, while wife Chris now often serves as a cook.
The original idea for camps came from a female former army officer and was designed to take a group of 30 kids in their mid-teens who were struggling into the Northern Flinders for a week.
Now a total of 500 young people participate in five programs over the cooler months over an area of 160 square miles.
They work in groups of 10, with a team leader and several other adults per group who are dropped off on the roadside to walk in different directions and cover about 100 kilometers over the middle five days.
Each person is given a backpack with a bed roll and sleeping bag.
They need to contribute to group activities, including rationing out and preparing food that has been dropped at each camp site.
The young people are nominated by schools, parents or sometimes the police as those at risk of getting themselves into trouble and the justice system.
Team leaders come from all walks of life and professions, and the teams usually include a younger mentor: someone who has been ‘at risk’ and a participant in the program.
Mr Jaensch assured the group the program is very well structured and supervised, ensuring safety for all as the leaders are in contact with the base camp who know where each group is at all times.
Operation Flinders aims to facilitate self-reflection, skills development, fitness and self-discovery, all without the distractions of technology and devices.
They travel on foot, carrying their packs over challenging terrain.
Mr Jaensch outlined some of the challenging behaviours at the start, like sitters, runners, abusers and chuckers, but with quiet one-on-one listening and discussion maintained by the leaders, good things happen.
He said 70 per cent of the kids were very reluctant for the first two to three days, which was hard work for the leaders, and mentioned the leaders, participants and parents have a follow-up meeting of evaluation.
They are getting a very high success rate getting the kids back on track, sometimes immediately and sometimes a while later.
Women in Agriculture and Business is supporting Operation Flinders as the fundraising project for this year.
