Makahika Outdoor Pursuits Centre & Civil Defence Centre

General information

HISTORY– Sir Edmund Hilary

Initially Makahika Outdoor Pursuit Centre (MOPC) was set up to by the Department of Social Welfare as Arapaepae OPC, to provide care of youngsters at risk; the camp was opened by Sir Edmund Hilary in 1986; modelled on the Outward Bound School. Its aim was to help young people who through problems with the law, within their families or in school, had special needs which needed to be worked through if they were to become responsible and contributing adults.

John and Sally Duxfield purchased the property in 2005. Significant fiscal investment in the property, safety systems, protocols, RAMS, equipment and personnel has occurred during the last eight years, and Makahika is on the leading edge in the industry for the provision of residential leadership courses in both the corporate environment and the NZ educational market.

The corporate industry point of difference for Makahika is their ability to accommodate corporate teams; unlike Outward Bound that focuses primarily on the development of the individual, MOPC provides experiential learning for clients that grow high performance teams, relevant to their organisations values and vision.

The educational market point of difference is the provision of personally designed camp and leadership programmes to meet the specific needs and values of individual schools. There are no 'off the shelf' standards programmes; you tell us your school needs and we'll design a programme to meet those needs.