By Lauren Lipton

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Outward Bound is a provider of experience-based outdoor leadership programs for young people and adults, and many area students take part.

Sarrah Schreffler is a high school student who spent two weeks this summer on an Outward Bound course.

” We did backpacking for eight days and we covered the entire Delaware Water Gap, and then we canoed it,” she tells KYW Newsradio.

And that meant no phones, no computers.

“It was weird at first,” she recalls.  “But all the electronics do now is let you contact your friends and be in constant touch with people around you.  But you don’t need electronics to keep in touch with the people who are five feet from you.”

“We take a group of individuals and we put them through a challenging, adventure-based experience,” says Katie Newsom Pastuszek, executive director of Outward Bound Philadelphia.  “And through that experience, they learn that they are capable of doing far more than they ever thought.”

Katie Newsom Pastuszek and Sarrah Schreffler at KYW Newsradio’s studios in center city Philadelphia. Credit: Ed Fischer)

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Hear the full interview with Sarrah Schreffler and Katie Newsom Pastuszek in this CBS Philly podcast (runs 11:01)…

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Since many of the students who participate in Outward Bound get scholarships to cover the cost of the program, on November 2nd they are holding a fundraising event — and you are invited.

“We are going to rappel from the roof of 1515 Market Street to Market Street,” Pastuszek says, and individuals can raise money through a web-based fundraising site for Outward Bound Philadelphia. There are groups from corporations that are getting together and raising money so they can ‘toss their boss.’ ”

(Just throw ‘em over without the harness?)

“No, no, no.  Tossing your boss means giving them the thrill ride of their lives.”

And that’s “Positively Philadelphia!”

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