"Being a part of a shipboard community where everybody has an important role is by itself very healing and therapeutic," stated Matt Claybaugh, CEO of Marimed Foundation and Program Director of SeaChange Hawaii. Matt was the featured guest on Lon Woodbury's LA Talk Radio Show: Parent Choices for Struggling Teens, Monday, August 1, 2011.
"We take children (cadets) with behavioral problems on a 6-8 week Tall Ship cruise through the Hawaiian Islands," explained Claybaugh, "and through this exposure to a natural environment, having necessary shipboard responsibilities, progressing through a series of 'rites of passages,' and experiencing steadily increasing mastery of this new environment, the cadets learn to work through their self-imposed limitations."
Claybaugh, being raised on the waters of Hawaii and a graduate of an outdoor curriculum course of study in Wisconsin, has been working in education and therapy since 1985.
"This work combines both my passions for both sailing and teaching. It's the best of all possible worlds for me," he continued. "The positive changes I've seen in the cadets who have been through SeaChange Hawaii in our first year make it all worthwhile."
Lon Woodbury, MA, IECA, CEP, an Independent Educational Consultant, is the founder/owner of Woodbury Reports Inc. and www.strugglingteens.com. He has worked with families and their struggling teens since 1984, and is the Host of Parent Choices for Struggling Teens on LATalkRadio Mondays at 12:00 Noon, Pacific Time.
Matt Claybaugh is the CEO and President of Marimed Foundation in Hawaii and in that position helped create SeaChange Hawaii a little over a year ago. This wilderness therapy program uses sailing on the ocean around the Hawaiian Islands as a change agent for adolescents with behavioral problems.