Equipment

Our Aim is to ensure that any Young Person who is accessing adventurous opportunities with our support also has free access to all needed clothing and equipment.

While there are many different barriers that hinder young people accessing opportunities to Adventure Education, including Socio-Cultural and Knowledge barriers, amongst those identified are the practical barriers which include cost. 

Young people accessing opportunities for Adventure Education face many of the same issues highlighted in the 2010 report by the Northern Ireland Assembly on the practical barriers for young people accessing sport, they stated that “the physical, medical and economic obstacles to activity that individuals encounter in their daily lives. Issues such as cost, safety, access, time pressures and health issues were significant”. This is echoed in the report by  Professor Power and her team at LSE Housing and Communities that highlight that cost is one of the biggest barriers to accessing sport.  

It is hard to quantify the extent that cost or economic hardship have in preventing young people accessing adventurous and outside opportunities that they would otherwise take up, however a national survey of parents by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative and Utah State University’s Families in Sport Lab showed that America Youth ages 6-18 from low-income homes quit sports because of the financial costs at six times the rate of kids from high-income homes. 

Although most specialist equipment used in Adventure Education would be provided by the delivery organisation Young People, especially those facing economic hardship, are often put off from accessing Adventure because they struggle to have sufficient or appropriate personal clothing or items that many people would have access to.  

At Access2Adventure we recognise the there is a need for even the most basic of clothing items and that if you only have one pair of trainers, for example, you are less likely to wear them canoeing / gorge walking / out in the mud.