Thousands of boys and girls go to camp every summer which include residential camps, day camps and specialty camps. Camping is an integral part of the school curriculum. What the magic in a camp experience is that it provides developmental values for our youth not discounting the link with school curriculum learning. Of all the educational possibilities for personal growth in our present day, the camping experience stands as one of our highest. Factors supporting this statement are due to the camp setting itself, the interaction of group living, the sharing of activities and the different form of leadership offered by adults who are not parents or teachers. A camp experience should be available to a broad scope of our young citizens. A keen look at the camping objectives will make one realize that life will be enriched and enhanced for a better preparation into adulthood: - The camping experience offers many opportunities to develop a variety of skills such as sports, crafts, water skills, nature lore, etc. The young person can explore new interests, in addition to extending already adopted interests.
- In addition to the myriad of activities offered during a camp experience there’s the realization and appreciation of a “supreme being” as visualized through nature that can be felt in the open environment of the camp setting itself. Camping can effectively develop spiritual growth for every camper when camp staff and counselors will teach the appreciations of the natural setting of a community and teaching the truth by example.
- Development of physical characteristics is a basic aim of camping. With diversified activities, balanced meals, trained supervision, camping increases mental and physical vigor.
- Safety is a primary realization of camping. This rests upon every member of the camp community for self and others.
- The most important skill of all is the promotion of social skills. The personal adjustments that campers have to make because of the intimacy of close living is a crucial need to be ready for our diverse, changing and demanding society. Camping develops pathways that lead to the understanding of others, such as persons of different races, economic levels, religions, gender and levels of capabilities.
- The characteristics that our schools are premised upon, democratic living, is solidified by camp life. This is so important in our current existence, especially when we exist in a multi-cultural society.
Possibly the answer may be the evolvement of school-camps, as mentioned above, supported perhaps by public school funds and operated as an integral part of our educational programs. A school camp would characterize many of the objectives of the regular academic curriculum, but it is distinguished by a completely different environment. Camping is fun, plus it is this atmosphere that provides a needed change of pace from the academic demands of our young people today. The school management should consider bring students to regularly involve school pupils to an overnight school camping activities. Our group can help plan and execute camping program based on the school objectives for two days one night and three days two nights. Please contact us at visioncamps@gmail.com or visit us at http://visioncamps.webs.com, we can help you draft the program.
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Planning a church retreat is hard work and there are challenges every time you think you have a handle on things. But it really doesn’t have to be that way. One thing is for certain, it will take time and a lot of due diligence on your behalf. Just remember that a poorly planned and poorly executed retreat is worse than having no retreat at all. The following is a list of helpful tips for planning a successful church retreat.
Point #1 – Why you should have a retreat? Ask yourself some pertinent questions like ”Who is this retreat for?” or ”What are their interests, needs, and wants?” Make sure that what is being offered in the retreat will hold everyone’s interest. Don’t assume that since it is interesting to you that it will be to everyone else. Ask people in the congregation/fellowship what their interests are. Get a feel for what is needed by everyone. Start to set a general objective and specific goals to see the direction of the program.
Point #2 – Choose the right facility! Find out from potential participants in the retreat what type of facilities that they are expecting. Several questions to ask are the following:
What kind of accommodations do we want — dorm rooms, motel type, or “rustic” cabins from light materials or concrete? Do we want to cook for ourselves or have the meals provided? If we do our own cooking, is there an extra charge? Do we want bathrooms in the cabins or are outside shower houses okay? Do we want “roast beef” or a “tuna surprise”? In other words are we particular about the quality of the evening meal? How much money do we want to spend, and more importantly, what is the group as a whole willing to spend? The Camp Locator is a community of campsite, retreat and conference centers with varied services that might fit to your objectives program and facility requirement.
Point #3 – Plan a program that will hold everyone’s interest! Plan a creative program inclusive of entertainment, musicians, and speakers. Make sure what you are planning fills interests and wants of the people that will be in attendance. Keep up with current trends and don’t rely on those who tell you ”this is the way we’ve always done it.” Your first reaction to that would be to say ”Well maybe that’s why no one shows up anymore” (and make sure you have that sarcastic grin on your face if it goes to that extent).
Point #4 – Money Matters is Very Important! Make sure that you have a sound budget for all this before presenting it to the board for approval. The first thing you want to do is figure out all your costs — food, lodging, leasing the facility, fees for musicians and speakers, etc. Once you have this calculated, add another 20% to that to cover incidentals and anything that pops up later. When you are determining the cost per person to help cover all these expenses, work the numbers in reverse. In other words, let’s say that the expenses will be 00,000 and you are expecting 100 people. Normally that would equate to 0 per person. Take that 00,000 and divide it by 80 instead of 100, because for every 100 people that say they will show up, 20% of them won’t. So now, you will advertise the retreat at 5 per person instead of 0 per person.
Pointer #5 – Promote, promote, promote! Start advertising the retreat 3-4 months before hand. Have flyers printed for hand outs and make sure they are in the foyer every time there is a service. Post bulletins on all the church ground bulletin boards and make sure that every bulletin that is printed has a blurb about the retreat. Here’s another tip — offer a discount on the price for early sign-ups. If you wind up losing another per person but instead of 80 people who sign up and attend it turns out to be 120 (@ 0 each), that’s 00,000. The bill is paid and anything over and above can go into the church fund for activities and expenses down the road.
For more information about planning your church retreat, church retreat ideas, corporate retreats or teambuilding programming, please visit http://visioncamps.webs.com or email us at visioncamps@gmail.com
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Summer camps for churches in 2011 is too soon but most churches has been sending inquiry to the online Camp Locator list of campsite still open for their programs via sms, emailing and phone calls to see if the holy week dates that is April 20-23 are still open. When 2011 come-in, there are few campsite facilities are still open, because some facility was already booked especially the days of holy week since early October 2010 until December booking has been very important to those church doing camping ministry program annually. Until today as of the writing of this blog, I received almost 10-20 people looking for a place that will host at least 50-100 church people for their summer retreats or youth camp. There are churches after culmination of their present camp program they will immediately booked the same campsite for the next summer camp.
The most ideal campsite booking in order to have the facility required to meet certain program goals for the next summer camp with the issue of important dates would be booked from 12-6 months ahead. The statistics of this website shows Campsite Pilipinas indicated at least 175 hit a day and increasingly during Saturday and Sunday.
The Camp Locator of Campsite Pilipinas is dedicated to connect campers from churches, schools, communities and corporate groups to the community of campsite facility owner or sponsoring groups that provides services of facilities and programs that are all intended to honor God with this type of ministry such as retreats, camps, workshop-seminar and conferences.
It is on the camp leaders (i.e. churches) to try to make booking for the next summer retreats, training or school camping ahead of time to avoid the cramming situations and you will be assured of the specific dates that your camp team set in order to meet your specific objectives.
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