Summer Camps Protection, Leraning and Fun!

 
1.4 The importance in organizing summer camp activities
Summer camp programs are designed and developed with the purpose of helping 
children to learn and strengthen their social skills. The program team is constantly 
consulting with children to reflect thoughts, feelings and ideas along the development 
of new activities. Moreover, summer camps allow identification of children who require 
Children provide feedback during a consultation session in Tirana Summer Camp, 2011
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SUMMER CAMPS GUIDELINE
support and preparation for starting the new academic year. Summer camp programs 
aspire for fulfilling the children’s needs, including the enrichment of knowledge during 
summer season school break holidays.
The need to stimulate and activate the children during the summer is particularly 
strong among families in need and those living under difficult social and economic 
circumstances. Summer camps assist low income families to gain the opportunity to 
provide their children entertainment and educational experiences, while somehow 
mitigating the inequality gap in relation to economically well-off families.
Besides these advantages, summer camp programs help children to gain a more 
positive school experience by addressing the specific instructional needs they may 
have and encourage regular attendance at school. During the daily summer camp 
activities, all children without exception are encouraged to actively participate in 
all activities in order for them to be able to increase their self-confidence, build 
new friendships, and increase confidence and cooperation among peers and their 
trusted adults, all of which are affecting the improvement of their general psycho-
social welfare. In addition, children are engaged in awareness activities concerning 
rights and their protection issues in order to be able to avoid or mitigate the impact 
of potential risk situations such as abuse, neglect, violence, labour exploitation, forced 
begging or trafficking.
Reflections and evaluations of the camps by participating children from past years 
have demonstrated that summer camps are a good opportunity for having fun, making 
new friendships, learning from each other, helping each other, and strengthening self-
confidence. Through the Summer Camps, the children build positive and collabourative 
relationships with their peers and the reliable adults around them, and make new and 
interesting insights on art, history and on their rights. At the same time, the evaluation 
process of summer camps from previous years has also indicated cases of children 
who do not feel very involved, are isolated from other children, or suffer from neglect 
or abuse from surrounding adults. Reflections of children should serve as a message 
to reflect on ways of involving children, communicating and behaving with them. At 
the same time, reflections of children deserve close attention as they are indicative 
of children’s experience at the camp, their self-esteem and the outcomes of creating 
relationships with others and camp personnel. 
Summer camps can provide positive experiences and memories that will last a 
lifetime. Therefore, investing in summer camp programs provides countless benefits 
to children in general and especially vulnerable children who are at risk of abuse and/
or exploitation. For these reasons, all local actors with an interest in or currently 
working in the field of child rights and protection, should be actively involved in 
organizing summer camps for children in their communities. Their collabourative 
efforts can ensure the provision of educational and entertainment activities for