Kokoda is a great opportunity for young people to develop resilience

One of the greatest challenges facing young people today is that they are running out of opportunities to develop genuine resilience.

Schools are increasingly constrained by legal concerns and risk management. Sport, while still valuable, has become highly structured, sanitised, and controlled. Even the simple freedom of unstructured play like climbing trees, getting lost outdoors, learning through scraped knees and failure, all feels like something from another generation.

The problem is that resilience cannot be taught purely in a classroom or through comfort. It must be experienced.

That’s why places like the Kokoda Track matter more now than ever before.

Kokoda remains one of the few environments left that strips life back to fundamentals. It challenges people physically, emotionally, and mentally. It teaches patience, discomfort, teamwork, adaptability, and courage ….. not through theory, but through lived experience.

After more than 30 years on the track, one of the most powerful things to witness is a teenager walking beside a parent, mentor, or loved one and slowly discovering what they’re capable of. You see confidence emerge. You see perspective shift. You see young people begin to develop a new narrative about themselves and their future.

Not because someone lectured them.
Because they earned it.

And perhaps that’s what we, as a nation, are missing most.