The first of this year’s six Imbewu Scotland courses got underway today, with students from across Aberdeenshire being brought together at Glen Tanar Estate – a beautiful 25,000 acre landscape encompassing farmland, river, pine forests and heather clad moors. Participants in the programme, all of whom had applied for a place through their school and whose opportunity was being sponsored by Aberdeenshire LEADER and Scottish Natural Heritage, divided into two groups, with the first being led off on trail by experienced guides, while the second group supported by Wilderness Foundation staff went off to spend three days involved in shadowing estate staff at Glen Tanar, engaging in conservation projects and traveling to the nearby MacRobert Trust Estate where they worked on restoring a hill path for visitors to use. At the halfway point of the seven day programme, the groups swapped experiences so that everyone had the chance to participate in both the trail and conservation work.
Richard Corby, Operations Manager for the Wilderness Foundation said:
It was an absolute privilege to be able to join these young people on their course and share the experience with them. Everyone worked so hard – really pulling together as a team with other young people they had only just met. Spending time at both Glen Tanar and MacRobert was an opportunity to get behind estate life and better understand the opportunities that are available in the rural sector, as well as give something back through the creation of a new woodland trail. Everyone involved in Imbewu Scotland should be very proud and we are hugely grateful to our estate partners and the programme sponsors, without whom none of this would be possible.
Imbewu Scotland is currently in the second year of a two year pilot scheme. The Foundation and project partners Scottish Land and Estates have ambitious plans for the programme going forward and are working to roll out Imbewu Scotland across a much larger area of Scotland from 2015 onwards.
