Climbing for Life - BELAY Program

Building Effective Leadership Attributes In Youth - THE BELAY PROGRAM

The Belay program has evolved into our indoor winter Program that focuses on a client organization and the youth they serve. The past three years CFL has worked with Devereaux Cleo Wallace, a residential treatment facility. The program provides recreation climbing activities and mentoring for the resident population at the Westminster facility.

The BELAY Program (Building Effective Leadership Attributes in Youth) is a long-term mentoring component of CFL’s experiential education program. Through the BELAY Program, participating youth are challenged with physical climbing activities with our volunteers. They learn critical social skills and the value of teamwork, trust and mutual support .

Long-term group mentoring has shown to be a very effective method to impact the lives of youth at-risk.

Our indoor climbing program brings close contact between our volunteers and the youth participants through healthy physical activity. The inability to share feelings with adults is a known risk-factor for substance abuse and other destructive behaviors. BELAY addresses these issues by encouraging open and honest dialogue between the mentor and the youth participant.

The goals of the BELAY program include:

• To create a cohesive and productive climbing team
• Help participants improve academic and organizational skills
• Increase participant community awareness and involvement
• Encourage participants to become leaders in their schools and communities

The indoor program runs on a bi-weekly basis throughout the winter and includes two summer outdoor programs.