For Rowan Diloia, the key to childhood learning wasn’t in a classroom or in the pages of a book. It was outside, in the mountains, beaches and creeks of Santa Barbara County. These were places he explored as a child, thanks to a local nonprofit called the Wilderness Youth Project (WYP). Serving kids as young as 3 and into high school, WYP is considered an early pioneer of an educational approach that’s now gaining acclaim nationwide. “It’s such a good alternative to staring at a phone, computer or tablet screen. Instead, let’s go outside, build a fort, learn how to make fire with two sticks and build a water filtration system,” Diloia said. When he was in the first grade, his parents enrolled him in the WYP, which was at that time an after-school program. They immediately noticed it made a difference for their son, who struggled with dyslexia and ADHD. “One of the grounding areas of his early life was the Wilderness Youth Project and their ability to bring him out into the wilderness and outside of his head,” said Tony Diloia, Rowan’s father. “A lot of after-school (programs) my parents tried didn’t really work for me,” Diloia said. “Most were a little too structured. But to be able to do my own thing at Wilderness Youth, go out in the dirt and climb trees, really helped.” When he entered high school, Diloia was accepted to the Visual Arts & Design Academy at Santa Barbara High School.  He is now a senior at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where he is studying furniture design. He recently won a prestigious national award from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., for his functional art. Diloia said...