There is value in every activity at Coleman Country. But usually it’s so subtle that campers don’t even feel like they’re learning and growing, because they’re having so much fun.

Youth development, the process of developing and building assets to help children deal with transitions from childhood through adolescence and adulthood, is defined by three milestones:

• Being productive (doing important stuff)
• Feeling connected (having friends)
• Learning to navigate (find your own way)

Learning social skills, gaining responsibility and resilience, and mastering coping skills are all advances that happen at camp. These create the foundation for the positive development of children: feeling successful, making new friends, gaining new skills, getting along better with others, and learning what one is good at.

As a result of their summer at Coleman Country, we want campers to use more positive, specific, and supportable words to describe themselves and to have a more optimistic self-image. We can all reinvent ourselves and be anything (or anyone) we want to be!

And they can do it at camp, because we make sure that everything we do is not just safe for knees and elbows, but for feelings, too!