Our Story
Improving Safety and Quality in Outdoor, Travel and Adventure Experiences
Viristar’s clients employ our expertise to elevate the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the outdoor, experiential, travel and adventure experiences they offer.
Government, academic, corporate, and nonprofit institutions in over 70 countries on six continents have relied on Viristar to ignite their potential to understand and use good practice standards in outdoor education, outdoor recreation, adventure tourism, experiential education, and related fields.
Our History
Viristar’s origins date to 2003 and a request to provide training to informal education specialists at a large education nonprofit in California, USA.
A subsequent request to provide a risk management audit for an experiential adventure program in Vietnam, and outdoor safety trainings in Taiwan and across Southeast Asia, led to incorporation as a training and consulting company, and Viristar was born.
Since that time, Viristar staff have helped government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, and professionals in over 70 countries around the world elevate the effectiveness of their work by helping them identify and implement improvements to organizational strategy and leadership, program design, and service delivery.
Viristar is animated by the recognition that enterprises have great potential to improve peoples’ lives, support equity and sustainability, and make the world a better place. Our work to help teams improve organizational culture, strategies, and practices, and to benefit from well-qualified staff, aims to help organizations achieve these outcomes.
Our Team
The experienced professionals that make up Viristar’s team have a proven track record of success in meeting or exceeding client expectations. The talents, advanced qualifications, and dedication that Viristar staff bring to their work is second to none.
Viristar believes that a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion enhances our organizational effectiveness. Our staff, drawn from multiple countries from Asia to North America, bring this same value to the work they do.
Viristar’s team members draw on hundreds of years of combined experience, in fields from outdoor education and wilderness leadership to corporate consulting. They bring to their work expert proficiency in subjects from risk management to curriculum design and strategic planning. Viristar’s capable professionals are ready to deliver extraordinary value to our clients.
Learn MoreCorporate Social Responsibility
Viristar’s commitment to environmental sustainability and social justice is at the heart of who we are and what we do.
Viristar’s origins are rooted in supporting organizations providing environmental education and character-development team experiences. Our training and consulting services continue to be focused squarely on helping organizations foster a healthy natural environment and an equitable society where everyone can thrive.
We also are deeply committed to reducing our company’s environmental impact, and integrating diversity, equity and inclusion into all our business practices and activities.
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Consulting, Training and Accreditation Solutions
Viristar’s services lead organizations and professionals to achieve new levels of proficiency and performance.
Consulting
Risk Management
Improve safety outcomes with Viristar’s deep risk management expertise. Viristar provides risk management reviews (safety audits), incident reviews, expert witness services, program development (such as document and procedure creation), and emergency response drills specific to client needs.
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Wilderness and Remote Medicine
Enhance your ability to prevent and respond to medical situations in austere, rural, or disaster settings. Viristar will help you design emergency medicine procedures, select appropriate medical and rescue supplies, and conduct realistic simulations where staff can hone medical-rescue skills.
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Program Development
Enhance program effectiveness and customer satisfaction by taking advantage of Viristar’s expertise in developing curriculum materials, staff training plans, outcomes assessment tools, standard operating procedures (SOPs), activity plans, and other essential resources customized to client needs.
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Business Management
Viristar’s management consulting services help organizations improve their effectiveness and sustainability. Service areas include strategic and business planning, nonprofit governance, executive leadership, fundraising, staff training, human resources, and sales and marketing strategies.
learn moreTraining
Risk Management
Viristar’s training products include our Risk Management for Outdoor Programs course, acclaimed as the global exemplar in safety training for adventure, experiential, wilderness, and travel programs. The online course is 40 hours over four weeks. A COVID-19 safety class is also available.
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Wilderness and Remote Medicine
Host a Wilderness First Responder, Wilderness Advanced First Aid, Wilderness First Aid, recert or other course at your site to train your team or members of the public. Viristar offers a full spectrum of wilderness and remote medicine courses available to individual enrollees as well.
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Custom Courses
Viristar can provide your organization with a customized in-person, remote or hybrid course that includes elements of safety training, wilderness rescue, emergency medicine, environmental education curriculum design, pedagogy, nonprofit leadership, adventure-based learning, and more.
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Adventure Safety Accreditation
Viristar’s Adventure Safety Accreditation provides assurance that an adventure-based education or recreation program has met widely-accepted industry good practice standards, through a rigorous and impartial standards-based evaluation process conducted by objective, independent reviewers.
Learn MoreView the Viristar Brochure
Our Clients
Viristar serves government agencies, educational institutions, corporations, nonprofits, and industry associations and governing bodies, as well as individuals.
Our clients come from a wide variety of sectors, including:
- Adaptive (disabled) sports/recreation
- Adventure-based counseling
- Adventure sports & adventure races
- Adventure tourism & adventure travel
- Award for Young People/International Youth Award
- Colleges & universities
- Conservation corps
- Creativity, activity, service (CAS)
- Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE)/International Award
- Environmental education
- Experiential education
- Gap year & study abroad
- Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Girlguiding
- Government
- Volunteer-led hiking clubs, outing clubs
- Humanitarian assistance/disaster response
- Independent school/international school
- International education
- K-12 education
- Military outdoor recreation
- Industrial/occupational health and safety
- Outdoor education
- Outdoor recreation
- Outfitter & guide
- Remote medical care
- Research & scientific
- Search and rescue
- Service learning
- Summer camp & year-round camp
- Therapeutic adventure
- Trip, travel & trekking
- Wilderness & survival skills
- Wilderness therapy
Where We Work
Viristar has provided training and consulting services to a growing roster of valued clients in over 70 countries and territories on six continents.
Map designed to represent geographic distribution of Viristar clients; no endorsement or acceptance of boundaries implied.
