CEF YouthWise™ @ Paul Roos Akademie

CEF launched the YouthWise progam in South Africa in October 2003, working with 60 students and 10 teachers, representing six separate schools from the Cape area. That year our YouthWise program theme was “Hope” – and during the course of the week with the students we shared with them the basic tools of CPS, which they applied directly to goals they identified in their own lives. Working together, we created the “story” of where they want to go, and they expressed this story through a variety of media – including their own journaling, and video.

Since 2003, CEF has returned to South Africa each October and added more students and more adult participants. A full cycle of all five YouthWise levels has been delivered to the original group of boys, and levels one through four have been initiated with new groups of students as they enter the Academy.

The YouthWise curriculum helps youth create possibilities for themselves and their communities by learning creative thinking skills, and applying the methodology of Creative Problem Solving to a variety of challenges in their lives – as a group and as individuals. It also provides important communication and facilitation skills that develop their leadership potential. Finally, the CPS training gives them valuable tools and techniques they can apply in all levels of their continuing education, thus helping to ensure continued success in their scholastic careers.

With new scholarships, hundreds of disadvantaged teenagers from the townships of the Western Cape will be able to receive Creative Problem Solving and leadership training twice a year (for a total of two weeks) instead of once a year, while attending the Paul Roos Akademie in Stellenbosch, South Africa.