Youth Development at
Coleman Country

There is value in every activity at Coleman Country. But usually campers are having so much fun, they don’t even realize how much they are learning and growing at the same time!

Youth development, the process of developing and building assets to help children deal with transitions from childhood through adolescence and into 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 discovering one’s talents.

As a result of their summer at Coleman Country, we want campers to use more positive, specific, and supportable words to describe themselves. We also want to help them to develop a more optimistic self-image. We can all reinvent ourselves and be anything (or anyone) we want to be! And we can do it all at camp! Because at Coleman Country, we make sure that everything we do is not just safe for knees and elbows, but for feelings too!