Mission Statement: To impact the lives of youth in a positive and lasting fashion via summer camps. With outstanding facilitators and the great outdoors as our classroom, we aim to build better people through better experience, to create conscientious citizens.
Purpose: We purpose to reach out to groups of youth immersing them in new summer camps activities, a new environment. This newness creates a sense of the unknown. The unknown heightens all senses and thus learning experiences are imprinted in a deeper more impacting fashion. Additionally, this newness, this immersion into the summer camps help to create a slight feeling of "off-balance" allowing the experiences themselves to breakdown bad habits and negative-learned behaviors. The learned behaviors may not support the idea of positive community, self-empowerment & kindness: behaviors and awareness we aim to imbue in our campers. In this environment, always safe and supportive of the individuals psyche, we’ll work to build leadership skills, interpersonal communication skills, self-awareness and a willingness to get to know someone before excluding or chiding. We’ll focus on kindness and offer the type of support and encouragement not found often enough in our day to day lives.
Reason for Purpose: While the world progresses it grows in complexity. While the population increases, and time passes, we can feel as if our place in the world is ominously undefined. We can quickly feel like we're floating in a world without boundaries, are living aimlessly, unimportantly. During our camps we endeavor to reach our youth before they have an opportunity to develop this feeling of isolation, loss. Action Whitewater's summer camps aim to show them how they fit in the world, how they impact the world, as individuals and as a group. We demonstrate life on a grand scale, wildlife both in animal form and the flora and fauna. While challenging their bodies physically by paddling rafts, hiking trails, swimming in the cool river waters, attendees of our camps are introduced to hydrology, watershed education, local flora and fauna, folklore and more: our camps offer experiential education in an organic way, so it's absorbed into our day to day activities feeling natural and not 'forced education time'. We stretch our communication skills learning to meet and work with others in team and individual efforts that may or may not collaborate into a greater group project. Our summer camps introduce campers to people from around the globe who have had different life experiences; these individuals are introduced by means of being the guides and counselors during our summer camps. We want to provide positive, supportive and growing experiences to youth.
Summer Camps: The Best of Both Worlds - Parents and Kids
by Christopher Pyle
Odds are you're reading this article because you've explored, to some degree the idea of a residential summer camp. Whether you're a veteran at packing the kids off to summer for camp or a newbie to the whole process, there are a few thoughts that cross your mind.
First, there are a lot of camps. Second, many appear to offer the same program. Third, they're not necessarily cheap. Finally, for the money spent, isn't it fair that I expect a little enrichment?
You're exactly correct in each thought. The volume of camps is overwhelming. They do cost a fair amount of money, there are similar programs and yes you should be able to have your child's person positively impacted while away.
In the perfect scenario your children are receiving the educational benefit without them being aware of it as they'll fully participate and not rebuff your camp suggestion. There are camps with programs aimed at tackling both fronts: fun and education.
The most obvious camp for education are camps specific to college prep programs or that offer summer classes, often on a university campus. Often kids will rebuff the idea of these camps because they don't appear fun and seem like more school. In these cases you need to be more discrete in the program you're looking at.
Look for a camp that references team building, a then look for what they do that builds a team. For example, a whitewater rafting camp may point to the teamwork required to paddle a raft down the river. An adventure camp might point to the supportive environment required to hike a mountain or complete a ropes obstacle course.
Try to locate camps referencing behavior requiring people to connect both in a one-to-one manner and in group settings. Industry terms used will be: leadership-skills, discussions, community. These terms are an indication the camp has at minimum considered the benefits to such activities.
Try to locate camps that speak of teaching and learning through experience. Since programs are being pulled from schools at an ever-increasing rate, we're losing this type educational experience. Camps that focus on this type of learning will help to offset some of the loss.
For an example of experiential education applied, we'll look to the rafting camp model. Given the camp is offering experiential education here are the experiences they'll emphasize and reinforce: teamwork is exercised and applied in each phase of a rafting trip from preparing the gear, to suiting up, to learning to paddle as a synchronized crew, learning safety techniques, and learning to swim in moving water. These skills encompass the physical, the mental and the verbal. All of these are employed simply during the one activity of rafting.
If you're exploring residential camps, you probably have the means to send your child. It's natural and good parenting to want to get the most experience for your dollar spent. Your child's life will be greatly enriched from their summer experiences.
Of course camp should be a positive experience, but you can look for the industry terms to hedge your chances of finding a camp that will please you as well as your child. Best of camp-hunting and to having the summer of a lifetime!
Christopher Pyle has been rafting the forks of the American River for 24-years. As owner/director of Action WhitewatersAdventure Camp, he combines his love of the river and its natural offerings with his passion for a child's right to happiness, he shares each summer with those that attend camp. To see your future and learn how to enroll, visit the camp page.
