Can you remember when you attended kids camp? The anticipation of going away independently? Sleeping in bunk beds in rooms of similar aged kids? The uncertainty of what the week would hold, but the foundational knowledge that you would have fun and do something more exciting than if you were at home with your parents?
We do a thousand activities at kid’s camp. There are low ropes courses and night hikes, games with balloons, hula hoops, rubber squeaking chickens stuck to the bottom of feet, getting the correct answers through mazes and not being spotted as you crawl up the hill. There is the sharing together in song, around a campfire, grace before meals and in our times of gather. We learn a little scripture and search for the lost coin and the lost sheep, so we too can celebrate. There is craft and showing others gratitude. There is the maturity of night games and looking after oneself a little, but also the expectations of helping the community through washing dishes, sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms.
But the most special time of kid’s camp is the between activities.
The sense of safety to be authentically themselves. The learning of personal identity and what they want to represent to the wider world. The value of vulnerability that enables the depth of friendships that are built with people who you didn’t even know two days ago. There are the continuing links to friendships that are built year after year, that will eventually be maintained into adulthood and reflected on 20 years later when bringing their own kids back to have similar foundational experiences.
Yes, the Victorian kids' camp was a 3-day, 2-night event, with 17 kids and seven staff members in the bushland of regional Victoria.
But it is always so much more than this.
Kass Unger
Children’s Minister
