Outdoor activities in residential programs aim to promote personal growth and to develop a healthy personality in troubled youth for whom other interventions have been unsuccessful. In the Netherlands, experiential outdoor programs consist of activities such as mountain climbing and rapelling, flat and white water canoeing, biking, sailing, caving, trekking and camping. The activities are used for a diversity of special populations such as adolescents with behavior disorders, drug addicts, youngsters with criminal records or psychiatric problems, and disabled young people in wheelchairs. In the experiential process, facilitators assess basic aims and needs with the youngster and establish basic rules. The experiential environment is composed of a small group of people and challenging surroundings. The youngsters start with a task in which abilities are needed that fit into the framework of meeting assessed needs. Preprocessing accelerates the outcome, which can range from failure to mastery. The group evaluates the process and may generalize the results. The results of the evaluation set the tone for the next new task. When a youngster builds a stock of experiences, he may step into real life with a set of self-rewarding, problem-solving strategies. An intensive program is being developed in the Czech Republic for more severely troubled youth, in which youth are heavily involved in the development of a campground, hotel, and restaurant. The youngsters will then return to a group home in Amsterdam for about 3 months. Experiential learning will be central to both phases. (KS)