Turning Winds organizes international service trips abroad for teenage clients twice yearly. We have taken students to Costa Rica, Ghana, Guatemala, Morocco, and other places. In November, a group of kids traveled to Greece.
As on previous occasions, the trip combined international volunteerism, learning and growth opportunities, and fun activities for the Turning Winds clients.
Our service trips are not only for studying different cultures and having a good time. Connecting with people who are going through significant struggles in their lives can have a powerful effect and is an important element of the therapy approach at Turning Winds.
Program Manager, Tara Stever and therapist Sean Carlin, MS, PCLC, accompanied the kids on this adventure. As always a lot of preparation went into the trip.
“A lot went into getting the students ready to go,” says Stever. “We did an orientation with Students Abroad. They met with our students and set up the service project, our guides, and the housing in Greece.” Turning Winds clients were also eager to voice their own interests. “We had many students who were interested in Greek mythology and we wanted to make sure that we were including that.”
INTERNATIONAL SERVICE TRIPS AS THERAPY
Our international service trips are intended to foster leadership, resilience, and a profound sense of global citizenship. Our teenage patients develop empathy and a hands-on understanding of diverse cultures by engaging in community service and contributing to their personal and academic growth. Exposing Turning Winds clients to the experiences of people in foreign cultures is a powerful aspect of service work.
“Getting out of their comfort zone was a huge part of this trip,” says Carlin. “I would say half of those kids were highly anxious so learning to experience new things and overcome their fears was important and all of the kids did a great job in Greece.”
Service trips are a great opportunity to employ coping skills learned at Turning Winds. “They utilized the skill set they had acquired and implemented their coping skills in a very public setting, in a foreign country even,” says Stever. “There was some anxiety about leaving their comfort zone here at Turning Winds but we worked on that before the trip. Several students were then utilizing coping skills by themselves and didn’t even seek our support. They were able to reset themselves and rejoin the group which gave those students a lot of self-confidence in their ability to do that when they return home.”
The visitors got very excited when it was time to see the Temple of Zeus and the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis but being of service to others made an even greater impression. “There’s so much value and benefit about being able to give back to others and it was great to watch how much they loved it,” recalls Carlin. “We served at a soup kitchen, we made 200 meals for the homeless, we went to a Ukrainian refugee home and painted and interacted with the children there. Some of our kids were brought to tears. At the end of each day, we got together and talked about what we had learned on this trip.”
GRATITUDE AND APPRECIATION
One of the things Carlin took away from the trip was gratitude and appreciation for the things that we have. “Not only did the kids see the service projects but they saw them with the people of Greece,” Carlin says. “They saw as American citizens how good we have it because we got to know our hosts on a pretty good level and you learn what life is like for them in Greece and the hardships that they experience. The kids picked up on that and came back more appreciative of what they have in life and hopefully, they’re gonna complain a bit less and enjoy the little things a little bit more.”
Stever noticed how feeding the poor made a deep impression on the Turning Winds students. “We had all those family-style dinners and they ate and never thought about wasting food—just throwing it out. After we did the service project one of the things I noticed was the extreme decrease in that behavior. They only took what they were actually going to eat and it became important for them to make sure that food was put away so that somebody else could utilize it.”
After visiting an orphanage many kids had a greater appreciation of the fact that they had a home to go to, that they had a family, and that they had taken that too much for granted. “They also realized that giving back didn’t just have to happen in Greece. The soup kitchen played a huge part in some of the students now wanting to be a part of something like that in their own communities back home.”
There was also self-reflection on past behavior. “We had several kids make comments about how they couldn’t believe the way they acted before treatment,” says Carlin, “how selfish and self-centered they were, and how the Greece trip was giving them a new perspective. That was pretty awesome.”
The Turning Winds students learned about the history of Greece and the economic circumstances Greeks live under today. “One of our hosts inquired about the minimum wage in America and we found out that the minimum wage in Greece is under four dollars an hour—that’s what most people in Greece are making,” said Carlin. “I looked at them and had to tell them that my 16-year-old daughter just got her first job and she’s making 3–4 times that amount. The kids also noticed that Athens was a little rundown. There’s a lot of trash, there’s graffiti everywhere, and cigarette butts.”
Processing these experiences improved self-confidence and built resilience. “It also allowed the treatment team to observe behaviors away from the Turning Winds campus and recognize what clients still need to work on,” says Stever.
LEADERSHIP AND RESILIENCE
Our international service trips are intended to foster leadership, resilience, and a profound sense of global citizenship. Our teenage patients develop empathy and a hands-on understanding of diverse cultures by engaging in community service and contributing to their personal and academic growth.
Exposing Turning Winds clients to the experiences of people in foreign cultures is a powerful aspect of service work. While the visitors may come as helpers, it is often the people being helped who become the teachers of valuable life lessons.
TWO DECADES OF EXCELLENCE
At Turning Winds, it’s not only adventures abroad but the people who make the difference. For the past two decades, we’ve built a team of some of the world’s finest academic and therapeutic professionals, who all share the same goal: to help teens re-engage meaningfully with their lives, families, and futures.
Ready to empower your teen? Explore our life-changing treatment options today! Contact us online for more information, or call us at 800-845-1380 to start your teen’s journey to a brighter tomorrow.
