People Behind YouthSafe Outdoors

Dr. Glenda Hanna   

  
Glenda Hanna, Ph.D., M.A., B.P.E., Principal of Quest Research and Consulting Inc., is the creator and principal investigator and author of YouthSafe Outdoors. Glenda has been actively researching, writing, teaching and speaking about risk management and legal liability in education and recreation for over 38 years. She is the author of several books and over a hundred articles and reports on the topic and has been sought after as a speaker on the subject at dozens of provincial, national and international conferences.

Glenda is recognized internationally for her ability to effectively and accurately articulate the industry and community custom for outdoor education and recreation programs. She has served as an expert witness in numerous legal cases involving school boards, camps, resorts, and other organizations and has provided risk management consulting and auditing services to several organizations.

In addition to her strong commitment to “coming from research” in developing YouthSafe resources, Glenda has a huge professional and personal experiential base from which to draw on. She was a professor of Outdoor and Environmental Leadership at the University of Alberta for ten years, where she taught and mentored many of today’s academics, teachers and leaders in the field.

She has also been:

• an outdoor pursuits instructor (more than 20 different activity pursuits),

• an outdoor pursuits instructor trainer and certification course examiner (in eight activities),

• Technical Director and Master Course Conductor of a sport certification body (Can. Assoc. of Nordic Ski Instructors),

• municipal recreation program supervisor in the City of Edmonton,

• the Youth Program Director of a YMCA in Winnipeg,

• the Executive Director of a non-profit group providing a major sport tourism event (Canadian Birkebeiner Society),

• a camp counsellor,

• a wilderness guide,

• a travel excursion and exchange trip leader, and

• a volunteer executive in local activity-based clubs (e.g., Edmonton Nordic Ski Club, Ceyana Canoe and Kayak Club).

Glenda has traveled extensively on land, water and snow. She’s completed numerous extended expeditions and races: e.g.; canoeing northern rivers including the Nahanni, Snake, Stikine and Coppermine and racing the Yukon River Quest from Whitehorse to Dawson City (715 km in 59 hrs.), sea kayaking Gwaii Haanas, backpacking throughout the Rocky Mountain National Parks and other numerous other wilderness areas, road cycling the Golden Triangle and mountain biking in the World Masters Games. She's cross country ski toured from Jasper to Banff among many other ski-based expeditions. And she's completed the Norwegian, American and Canadian Birkebeiners cross country ski races; finishing the Canadian Birkebeiner (55 km carrying a 5.5 kg pack) 26 times, and winning the event six times.

Global Woman of Vision Award Presented to Dr. Glenda Hanna

Glenda is the recipient of the Global Woman of Vision Award for her work in creating and authoring YouthSafe Outdoors. This award celebrates women whose personal dedication and actions toward realizing their dreams improves life in the community and serves to inspire others.

Key selection criteria focus on the degree to which the individual provides an inspiring example of a woman who has had a bold vision of something that could benefit the community, believed steadfastly in herself and the initiative she has created, done the hard work involved, overcome significant obstacles to make it happen, and, ultimately made a significant, beneficial impact on the community.

The Global Woman of Vision Board agreed that Dr. Hanna's efforts to encourage and promote healthy, safe activities for youth and safety on school field trips through the YouthSafe Outdoors initiative were worthy of such recognition. The fact that the three year project led to about eighty percent of the school jurisdictions in Alberta adopting and distributing YouthSafe Outdoors resources to all of their schools, speaks highly to the tremendous impact the project has had in that province.

Associates

Dorothy Haines Consulting

Dorothy Haines has provided extensive administrative and records management expertise and support, and she has performed yeoman's work in formatting the updated YouthSafe Outdoors package to the online platform to maximize end-user access and ease of use. 

Mediashaker
Mediashaker is a website development company based in Edmonton that builds websites by helping companies figure out their ideal sales process and using that understanding as the basis for the site content, navigation flow and design. Media shaker has also developed it's own website content software to make it simple for people to manage the content of their sites and use them to manage their business and customer relationship processes.

Other Professional Associates
Synergy Canada Inc. provided operations management for YouthSafe Outdoors projects from 2001 to 2007. Many thanks to Mike Hanna and his sub-contractors for their contributions.

Advisory and Review Groups
YouthSafe Outdoors initiatives have benefitted from many dozens of people from across education systems who have brought their expertise and wisdom to bear in co-creating and/or conducting detailed reviews of draft YSO resources to ensure they are the best they can be. They were part of formal project-specific advisory groups who met regularly and/or worked iteratively electronically to help ensure we got it right. To all of these amazing, dedicated people, thank you.