Personal Growth

• The physical and chemical changes occurring in a teenager's body create emotional and psychological demands. As the teen's body changes, he requires extra rest and higher calorie intake, and therefore benefits significantly from regular athletic exercise. For many teens, especially those in urban areas, these necessary elements are missing from their daily routine. Youth outreach programs which bring the teen out of his normal environment into one which includes balanced nutrition and physical challenges will greatly improve his personal growth. Outdoor programs such as the Trailside Discovery Summer Camp in Alaska bring children into the forest and woodland settings and offer a broad range of outdoor educational experiences.
  
  

Relational and Emotional Growth

• Teens also enter uncharted water regarding their relational and emotional growth. All education is facilitated by example and instruction. However in our modern culture, examples of healthy relationships and positive emotional habits sometimes are few and far between. Teens need positive emotional examples in order to learn the difference between childhood and adulthood relationships. Teen outreach programs such as the RedCliff Ascent Wilderness Training Program partner individuals with adult mentors helped transition the adolescent into adulthood. RedCliff, located in Utah, challenges troubled teens in a wilderness setting, which demands physical challenge and personal growth.
  
  

Educational Progress Through the Arts

• Educational reticence often is connected more directly to self-confidence than academic ability. As teens become more aware of their peer groups, they often become less willing to risk failure by attempting new things and thus expose themselves to ridicule. by exposing children to the arts, they are incurred to take risks and try new things as part of the learning process. Educational youth outreach projects, such as those by the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts in Arizona, expose children to more than 200 educational activities which foster personal growth and a positive self-image.
  
  

Learning New Skills and Breaking Old Habits

• Positive and negative habits lie at the core of any person's success. Often teens who fall into poor habits do so as a result of negative relationships. Successful teen outreach programs remove the teen from her normal surroundings and give her the opportunity to learn new skills and break existing harmful habits. For this reason many teen outreach programs are found in rural areas to provide teens with a new environment, new friends and new relationships, and to limit exposure to old friends and environments. The Teen Challenge residential youth programs aid teens in breaking old destructive habits while making new friends and gaining positive lifelong skills.
  
  

New Environments and New Friendships

• Change lies at the heart of all personal growth, and most often individuals avoid personal change. Personal change can be messy when a teenager does not possess a clear map into healthy adulthood. Personal change can be emotionally painful as individuals face their own limitations and mistakes and learn they must individually make different choices. A successful teen outreach program immerses the participants in a new environment so they can make new friendships and new choices which facilitate personal growth.