Tim Marchinton • Director
Tim loves sharing adventure with young people and believes in the magic of Adventure Based Experiential Learning (ABEL) in a camp environment.
He began focusing his career specifically on working with children living with a chronic or life threatening illness in 1992. He has delivered adventure therapy programs to children in 40 countries and during his career has held recreation management positions all over the world.
In 2002 he founded Purple Soup to provide challenging activity based programs for children and their families affected by serious illness. These programs are designed to rebuild confidence, self esteem, trust and courage in a safe, fun and supportive environment.
Through Purple Soup and his team they deliver adaptive adventure programs and creates amazing theme days and events for “time out programs”
Tim holds a BA in Recreation Management, a Post Grad in Adolescent Counselling and instructor qualifications in many outdoor pursuits. He is often engaged as a speaker, consultant and trainer in the corporate sector specialising in adventure based leadership and team development programs.
The role of directing the organisation is varied and encompasses many roles however his prefered job title is “Game Maker-Upperer”
He is terrified of even the smallest spiders.
Our Facilitators
Our Purple Soup facilitators are engaging, caring, compassionate and energetic – and they are experts at providing serious fun!
Our team members are called “Soupers” and the absolutely love what they do. They get to make a difference in the lives of some very special families and we always endeavour to provide the same staff for each repeat program and organisation so that they can build on previous connections made with the young people and their families.
Each team member is hand-selected and trained in adventure activity instruction and counselling skills. They also have specific knowledge and advanced skills regarding the medical condition of the children they work with.
Safety is our first priority (with fun following a close second!). In every activity we deliver we utilise the very best industry accepted fail-safe systems, procedures and equipment.
All our staff hold current Working With Children checks, first aid qualifications and attend regular staff training and development programs.
At all times they adhere to our child protection and code of conduct policies.
In 2009, Purple Soup won the Victorian Government Children’s Community Service Award for Best Practice in Child Protection Policy and in 2012, the Soup’s Child Protection Policy won the Director’s Cup at the 2012 North American Camping Conference of Hemophilia Organizations.