The Frontcountry Leadership Training (FLT) is our most popular course. The FLT is a field course focused on car camping in a "front country" setting, meaning you will drive to the campsite and don't need to hike in with your gear.
2025 FLT registration pages coming soon! For now save the date for our 2025 FLT courses: March 1-2: North BayMarch 29-30: San FranciscoMay 3-4: South BayOctober: East Bay (dates TBA)November 8-9: San Francisco We schedule FLTs throughout the year and announce new course dates periodically. If you don't see FLT dates that work for you, sign up for our newsletter to be the first to learn about new course dates as they're announced.
Join us for our signature 2-day car camping course in our beautiful local parks.
Our courses follow our signature "Train-the-Trainer" model, using experiential education, role modeling, and more to grow participants' technical skills as campers and their facilitation skills as outdoor educators. This is what sets us apart from other commercial outdoor trips–we prepare you to bring your skills back to your unique community of youth and families and take them outdoors. BAWT specializes in culturally relevant education, so all lessons will use a lens of diversity and inclusion.
The FLT will focus on car camping in a frontcountry setting. This means you will drive to and park at the campsite, and while you will certainly be surrounded by nature, you won't be in a "wilderness" or backcountry setting. During the FLT you will learn technical skills for car camping like setting up and managing a campsite, meal planning and cooking in a camp kitchen, safety and risk management, hiking skills, and outdoor facilitation.
Your course will begin with a mandatory pre-trip meeting on a weekday evening a few days before the field (camping) component of the course. Then, the field component of your FLT will be a camping trip that takes place over two days, including overnight. You should expect the entirety of both days to be dedicated to your FLT; due to the full days and limited downtime in the schedule, we are typically unable to accommodate participants with scheduling conflicts.
Your registration cost completely covers all the gear you'll need on your course. You will receive a packing list before your course, and you'll have a chance to check out anything you need from our extensive Gear Library at your pre-trip meeting before the course.
We offer a General Registration price and a Mission Registration price for our signature courses. Both of these prices are offered at a substantial discount from our costs to run the course, which helps us ensure wider financial accessibility for all, with special attention to educators working in settings that fit our mission.
A key component of the BAWT course experience is spending time living and learning in community with other educators and youth workers who want to get youth outdoors. Each participant brings their own unique skills, knowledge, and experiences to enrich each other's learning process, and BAWT offers continued opportunities to be in community after your course ends.
Past FLT course locations have included Tilden Regional Park, Anthony Chabot Regional Park, Joseph D. Grant County Park, and more.
Location: BAWT Headquarters Agenda: Meet your instructors, get to know fellow course participants, create community agreements, discuss carpool logistics and meal planning, overview the course agenda and learn about the gear you will use, begin training activities, check out gear to use for your course Sample Schedule: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Sample Location: New Woodland Group Camp, Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley CA Day 1 Content Overview: Campsite setup and safety, hiking basics, trail games, camp kitchen, risk management, navigation Sample Schedule: Your day will be jam-packed with experiential education! The same schedule below has just a few ideas of what your Day 1 might look like on your course.
Sample Location: New Woodland Group Camp, Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley CA Day 2 Content Overview: Campsite cleanup, resource overview, games, and graduation Sample Schedule: Day 2 is another busy day! You'll have camp breakfast, tackle a few more lessons, learn how to break camp, and help with returning gear to BAWT in great condition.
Last Day of Course: You may be required to return to BAWT Headquarters with your fellow participants to clean, return, and put away course gear. We'll model some ways you can approach end-of-trip tasks with your youth when you return to your school site or organizational home base. After Your Course: As a freshly minted FLT graduate, you'll have access to our 9,000+ item outdoor gear library. After you make a myTurn account, BAWT staff will assign FLTmemberships to course graduates and you can start reserving gear for your next trip with youth! You'll have access to all the items you learned about on your course, such as:
