Summer camp programs provide adolescent counselors with opportunities to work alongside adult staff, aiming to develop critical skills such as communication, responsibility, independence, and teamwork. Growing research supports the value of camp-based developmental relationships through youth-adult partnerships. However, tensions often arise as…

Camp has proven to be an effective positive youth development strategy for children and youth who experience trauma and adversity. However, training camp counselors who are prepared to meet the needs of trauma-exposed youth in these settings are less understood. This pilot evaluation study provides the results of a social simulation-based training…

Background: Summer camps can promote positive youth development. Unfortunately, racial, ethnic, and economic disparities contribute to inequities in camp participation and related research on marginalized youth. Consequently, it is not clear what types of camping programs work best for marginalized youth. Purpose: To conduct a quasi-experimental…

Background: Summer camps engage millions of youth in enrichment opportunities during the summertime while employing a substantial young adult workforce to provide high-quality programs and services to camp participants. Workplace fatigue has been implicated in camp-related injury and illness events, yet few studies have targeted fatigue among camp…

Interest in both the objective dimension and the subjective dimension of summer camp experiences has grown among camp scholars. As a building block for understanding subjective elements of summer camp experiences, discrete defining moments may provide insights into linkages between what program providers deliver and the experiences that youth…

As 4-H evolves to include a wide breadth of youths' modern interests, innovative educational opportunities and evaluation practices become necessary. Horsemanship and safety-based horse camps were created in response to a statewide challenge to develop competitive 4-H members and retain those members as they approach adolescence. This article…

Physical inactivity is a growing problem among children, particularly school-aged youth. Research suggests children are especially prone to inactivity in the summer months when access to structured school-time and extra-curricular activities is reduced. Community programs like residential summer camps offer an excellent environment for engaging…

The author's used this article to discuss critical pedagogy and praxis, but also provided an example of their work and process of engaging in participatory action research (PAR) with Native American Youth as they navigated through their own tensions of positionality and criticality with historically marginalized teens. They introduce the…

Many children experience summer learning loss during the summer as measured by grade-level equivalents on standardized tests. Camp-based reading programs are a promising strategy to reduce summer learning loss. Situated within a positive youth development (PYD) theoretical approach, this study explored the efficacy of a U.S. camp-based reading…

Over the course of three summers, Sierra Health Foundation hosted a weeklong summer youth development camp for REACH coalitions at its Grizzly Creek Ranch retreat facilities in Portola, California. Located 130 miles east of Sacramento, Grizzly Creek Ranch is set in the mountains of Plumas County and encompasses 1,500 acres of forests, streams and…

Summer camp is a type of laboratory for community living. Society's needs have changed from providing a positive summer challenge for idle youth to experimenting with the demands and rewards of working in community groups. Decentralized camping emphasizes the team decision-making approach to teach self-reliance and awareness of democratic…

Although camps have made opportunities increasingly available to youth of poverty areas, little was reported about how successful their programs were. In addition, there persisted an uneasiness that the numbers of children and youth of poverty areas included in camping programs were not proportionate to the need. Local and national studies were…

To prepare students for attending school out-of-doors, this manual addresses the student directly. Topics covered in the first part of the manual include the Outdoor School site, the school staff, living at the Outdoor School, studying in the Outdoor School, fun at the school, and a brief paragraph of initial preparation for the Outdoor School.…

This report evaluates the 1970 Summer Enrichment Programs for the Public Schools of the District of Columbia. There were 35 programs with a very wide range of purposes, involving 21,555 students. These much needed programs for student achievement and enrichment could only have taken place during the summer. A few were exemplary programs, but some…

An educational program that provides small group living experiences for 450 to 500 young Hungarian students annually and that emphasizes the importance of reading and of an appreciation for the arts and sciences is described in this booklet. An explanation of the "camp for young readers" concept is presented in the first section,…