From the Backwoods to the Frontlines: Project South’s Wilderness First Responder Pilot
During the summer of 2025, Project South deepened our commitment to community preparation by piloting a 90-hour Wilderness First Responder (WFR) Training through our 2025 Building A Movement (BAM) Institute.
Held at our sanctuary space in the woods of rural Georgia, the training brought together organizers from Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina for nine intensive days of learning, connection, and skill-building.
Eighteen participants completed the full course and are now certified Wilderness First Responders, trained to practice CPR, trauma care, bleed control, and to respond in mass-casualty events, among many other lifesaving skills.
Over the course of the week, they trained in:
- CPR and “stop-the-bleed” techniques
- Managing heat and cold exposure
- Supporting people in shock and high-stress situations
- Night simulations of mass-casualty events
Because youth leadership is a vital part of our work, seven children ages 5–12 also completed their own first-responder curriculum. Through this program, they built age-appropriate emergency-response skills and visited the local fire department in the community where we trained.
This WFR pilot isn’t just additional training. For us, it represents a critical expansion of Southern movement capacity. The vision of the First Responder Training is to deepen technical and organizing skills in a time of escalating climate disasters, failing healthcare systems, and increasing state and social violence.
By grounding emergency medicine within a movement context, we transform a course traditionally designed for recreational wilderness settings into training for disciplined response in any “austere environment”—from a hurricane aftermath to a mass shooting.
These newly certified First Responders worked together as a cohort to provide support during the Katrina 20 People’s Movement Assembly in New Orleans in August, and again in October during the Sapelo Island Memorial Ceremony, where the island community honored the victims of the gangway collapse one year after the tragedy.
Back in their home communities, participants are putting their skills into action, strengthening mutual aid liberation centers, advancing sanctuary land projects, and building the long-term resilience of communities across the South.
Download this Community First Aid zine created by BAM participant Ra’Niqua Lee that sums up some of the lessons learned during the WFR training.
