Summer Camp Happy Healthy Holidays

Over the course of the summer holidays we ran a four-week summer camp at Joseph Chamberlain College. The aim of the project was to educate children on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle, whether that was eating or exercising. There was no cost at all and a trip to Bournemouth Beach concluded the programme.

It began on the Monday 22nd July and ended with the trip on the 27th August 2019. By the conclusion, we had engaged over 70 youngsters between the ages of 8-15, with an average of 50 kids per day for 16 days.

A standard day started off with a run to the nearby Lidl for the head coach who bought fresh fruits, drinks and the odd cookie, or two, okay three max. A wait for kids to be dropped off and signed-in followed and once ticked in they headed into the sports hall and activies were already setup by our coaches, the most popular and usual morning game was dodgeball.

Twenty minutes would fly by and the dodgeball session would finish in no time. After which the head coach would put all the youngsters into three groups, one to be led by each coach and the three groups would rotate throughout the morning and early afternoon, giving them a chance to experience everything on offer on the day.

Activities included workshops on mental health, bullying, alternative foods to eat to stay healthy, sugar intake and with all of our projects we had the sport element. Children would get the last hour of the day to have a free play with whatever sport they would like. Popular choices were football, cricket, basketball and colouring.

Parents were really supportive of our project and that was evident on the last day when we had more than a handful of cakes, doughnuts and chocolate boxes, and as ever there were a few tears shed too. One parent went on to say “Thank you for the summer camp, before the holidays I wasn’t sure where to send my daughters and how to get them active and engage with new people, but this summer camp has done just that and I am so glad I sent them to yours”.

In fact our summer camp was so popular and in demand that we had Sky News request to do a piece on the interest we gathered.