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The role of skill building: building camps that care about kinds--third in a series of four articles.

Article Excerpt
Maybe Walt Whitman was on to something. When we think of the very best ways to help young people grow into productive, caring adults, we like to think that their experiences at camp matter. In this article, we explore what we learned from the Program Improvement Project (PIP) about the skill-building supports and opportunities for campers.

In the two preceding PIP articles in Camping Magazine, the Community Action Framework for Youth Development (Gambone, Klem, & Connell 2002) was briefly described. This framework describes what is needed to help young people develop into adults who are economically self-sufficient, able to sustain healthy family relationships, and contribute to their community. If we want these adult outcomes, we need to provide our youth with four critical supports and opportunities:

* Multiple supportive relationships with adults and peers

* Physical and emotional safety

* Challenging and engaging activities and learning experiences

* Meaningful opportunities for involvement and membership

The specific steps used in the PIP study were described in Inspirations (the report on the benchmark process that served as the starting point for the project) and Innovations (the description of the quality improvement process used to bring about changes in the supports and opportunities offered at PIP camps). Remember from these previous articles and reports that part of the process for the PIP camps was to take a hard look at their strengths and weaknesses in each developmental area. The PIP camps assessed their organizational practices, talked with campers and staff to better understand why they scored as they did, and then selected particular areas they wanted to improve. Not every PIP camp chose to focus on the same developmental area. Each camp implemented change strategies in areas and ways that made sense to them,...