Tag Archives: day camp

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13 Reasons to Support the Y in 2013

Most people know the Y as a place for “gym and swim,” and fostering healthy living is a core part of the Y’s mission. But the Y does much more than that in the community and for the community. Over the last year we’ve shared some of those stories of how the people at the Y — members and staff — go above and beyond to do everything from ensuring everyone has a place at the Y to fostering future Olympians to raising student performance in school. Here’s a look at some of those stories….and we look forward to bringing you even more in 2013!

1. Everyone belongs at the Y. If there’s one thing that defines the Y more than anything else, that’s it. From people with disabilities to seniors to single parents and everyone in between, the Y, through the Strong Kids Campaign, ensures everyone who could benefit can be a part of the Y. More than that, though, the welcoming atmosphere and friendly staff make people feel like valued members of the Y family.

2. The Y provides access to the arts to people who might not otherwise have a path discover their creative spark. The Detroit Creativity Project, supported by a group of successful Detroit-expatriate actors and comedians now mostly living in Los Angeles, has provided more than 100 high school students with improvisation classes taught by local professionals. Y-Arts instructors are prominent in their fields in addition to teaching kids the fundamentals of visual arts, hip-hop, acting and more. And the lobby gallery of the Boll Family YMCA provides a space for the community to see the work of well-respected artists in all media.

3. The Metro Youth YMCA, or MY-Y, encourages youth to achieve their dreams — and beyond. From showing them a path to college to actually driving them to out-of-state scholarship interviews, MY-Y impacts at-risk young people’s lives for the better.

4. More than 700 Detroit school kids learned to swim for free through the Detroit Swims program. African-American and Hispanic youth are at much higher risk of drowning than Caucasian children; teaching them to swim will reverse that tragic toll. The eventual goal is to have every child in the city of Detroit able to use basic survival skills in the water.

5. More than 800 girls learn life lessons through running with the Girls on The Run program. Not only do they develop themselves as runners — a physical activity they can enjoy for a lifetime — they learn lessons about self-esteem, peer pressure, and stress management, among other themes. One group even got a visit from the reigning Miss Michigan, Angela Venditti. The Girls on the Run philosophy is to teach girls to Honor Their Bodies, Celebrate their Voices, Embrace their Gifts and Activate Their Power.

6. Y staff believe in the mission; their work goes far beyond just a paycheck. Lifeguard Chelsea Cheek, a college student working two jobs, donates a substantial percent of her paycheck from lifeguard duty at the Macomb YMCA to the Strong Kids Campaign and has raised money through community events. Staff at South Oakland have donated time to teach classes, help with a Mom-To-Mom sale, and more to raise money for Strong Kids scholarships. And even the youngest members step up with creative ways to fundraise.

7. The Y encourages fathers to bond with their kids. The Adventure Guides program, which will be expanding to more branches in 2013, sends fathers and daughters off on adventures from ice skating to camping, creating bonds that last a lifetime.

8. The Y rallies behind its staff and members in tough times. Health worries, job losses, sudden disability, even unimaginable tragedy — the Y steps up.

9. Even people who never fit the fitness-enthusiast mold learn to enjoy a healthy, active lifestyle at the Y. Alexis Sumner went from weighing 400 pounds to doing sprint triathlons, and new mom Dani Keith-Marchment finished her first 5K when she never thought that was possible thanks to the help of her trainer.

10. Providing quality education and improving skills is a key part of the Y’s impact. The Y runs two schools locally, Detroit Leadership Academy and Detroit Innovation Academy, both of which have received gorgeous playgrounds through the hard work of volunteers. And the Y’s summer program for at-risk students, Camp Phoenix, serves students’ entire families and has a measurable impact on academic performance.

11. Day camp at all branches provides children, from toddlers through teens, with a high-quality and fun experience, and parents with peace of mind that their children are in a safe, caring environment.

12. Middle-school age youth throughout the Detroit Metro Area learn about the importance of making smart decisions about sexual activity — and that staying abstinent is the healthiest choice for them — through the Y SWIFT (Sexual Wellness Information for Teens) program.

13. The Y launches future Olympians. Three-time Olympic medalist Peter Vanderkaay began swimming at the Y at age 7, and continues to give back through helping raise awareness of the Detroit Swims program.

 

 

 

 

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Teens Find Their Confidence

Middle school age kids are very hard to keep busy during the summer. They are too young to work, sometimes too young to stay at home alone, and too old for many activities. That’s the problem the Farmington Family YMCA faced this summer when planning their day camp for older youth. Because they had grouped campers by grade and not by age, the age range has been very wide in previous summers, which didn’t always work well for the oldest kids.

Katrina Stewart, who is Youth and Family Director at the Farmington Y, has two children of her own in that age group, and used what she wanted for her own children as a basis for reinventing the middle school age camp. She teamed up the littlest campers, who are ages 3 to 5, with the older kids, so the older ones could serve as role models. The campers also did service projects as well, beautifying the outside of the Y, putting bat boxes at Heritage Park, and packing food boxes at Gleaners Community Food Bank. They also organized a car wash to generate donations to the Strong Kids Campaign.

“We wanted to get kids more confident by setting an example,” says Mike Green, director of the older kids camp. “With them going into middle school and high school, and dealing with those social groups, if they are able to have those leadership values their friend base will change.”

The service projects the kids did were chosen to be long-lasting, something they can point to after the summer and know they had that impact. “A lot of them were resistant at first,  but they had a sense of satisfaction afterwards that they just helped somebody,” Mike says.

They also did a lot of self-knowledge activities to help them understand their own abilities in a positive way. They had one overnight trip to one of the YMCA’s residential camp, which they loved because “it was like a vacation,” said camper Kennon Stewart. Around the campfire that night, counselors led them in an activity meant to discourage bullying. Each child — and the staff — wrote a word on a piece of paper that someone else had called them that had hurt. Each of them shared their word, and counselors asked them to reflect on how it had made them feel and how another person might feel if they said those words to them. Then they balled up the paper, and each camper threw their word into the fire.

“None of us have ever said any of those things to each other,” says Kennon. “We have a bond now.”

The next day they had a field day with the young kids, which everyone loved.  Camper Brianna Ramsey developed a bond with a girl named Josie over the course of the summer.

Brianna says camp has made her feel more confident. “It has  made me realize I can have an impact on anybody’s life, young or old,” she says.

Jamel Cherry, another camper, liked the diversity at camp– kids came from all different schools. They did an activity of a making a root beer float to show how different people can come together and make something better than they would be apart from each other, which was really meaningful to him.

Katrina says she’s thrilled with how well camp has gone and the effect it’s had on the kids — so much so that they are continuing with some new teen leadership programs in the fall. “They’ve become a little family,” she says. “They’re showing very responsible and positive behaviors toward one another, because the focus was shifted from them to others.”

 

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Kids Learn Life Skills at Camp

Summer’s “brain drain” is a very real problem. Children who are not exposed to learning over the summer, whether in a camp or in a less-structured home setting, can start the new school year having lost a significant amount of what they spent the previous year learning. And the problem is more serious among lower-income kids.

Camp Riley at the Farmington Family YMCA helps plug that brain drain, and give kids a fun, supportive, safe environment in which to spend their summer as well. The program is funded by The Riley Foundation, as well as the Y and Farmington Youth Assistance and serves kids ages 5-12 for nine weeks over the summer. They take over a school building provided by the Farmington school system, where qualified teachers help them brush up on their reading, math, and writing skills.

Older kids also had life skills sessions with social worker Doreen Brant focusing on bullying, goal setting, and career aspirations. Reaching kids at this age, before they start middle school, is a critical time to help them think about their aspirations and their values so that they continue on the path to success.  “They are great group of kids,” Doreen says. “They are very caring and accepting of others to begin with, and this gave them a little extra stuff to work with.” The anti-bullying sessions were especially effective, she said. Campers were working among themselves to defuse bullying situations, pointing out the behavior and stopping it.

Projects focused on serving others, as well; kids wrote letters to soliders serving in Afghanistan. They also had a “caring tree” where they could add leaves to the tree whenever someone did something positive.

Each year’s camp has a theme; this year’s focused on books and writing, and the kids journaled a different chapter every week. At the end of the session, the kids actually published and bound their own books. A grant from Dollar General paid for the supplies to do that and also provided each child with a backpack full of school supplies, as well as a journal so that they could continue their daily writing habit.

Parents like the program because it’s fun for their kids but keeps their skills sharp over the long summer months, and they know their kids are safe and having fun.

Each session ends with a jubilee. Kids perform a song and dance for their parents and show them what they have learned over the summer. This year, because of the book theme and because each child created their own book, the kids held a book signing as well.

Camp Riley provides a wonderful resource for the community, Doreen says. “The whole camp is a wonderful thing for these kids. A lot of them would just be home alone while the parents are working,” she says. “And the camp counselors really have an impact on the kids’ lives.”

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Campers Get Surprise In The Mail

Life is full of surprises, as campers at the South Oakland’s  YMCA’s day camp discovered last week. As part of their opening week theme, “The Great Wide Open,” Discovery campers (ages 5-6) wrote notes about camp, attached them to balloons, and let the balloons float away to “great wide open” spaces unknown. Each note had the Y address with a request for anyone who found the notes to write back, and the children speculated about where their messages might end up.

They got a big surprise last week, when a letter with a New York City return address arrived at the Y. Inside was a note from a woman who had, on her way to work, seen a balloon sent off by camp counselor Miss Autumn . She stopped, retrieved it, read the note, and wrote back. Her note said:

“Miss Autumn, Found caught on a branch on the way to work in New York City. Hope all the kids have a good time at camp.”

The kids were thrilled to get a note back, and were even more surprised when they saw how far away New York is from Michigan.

Campers got to learn about geography, communication, and maybe even most importantly, that life is full of good people and wonderful surprises.

 

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Arts Camps Provide Skills for Summer

Imagine being a tween or teen and honing your artistic skills in the heart of a major city, learning from professionals in the field.

That’s the opportunity available for young people this summer at arts camps offered by the Boll Family YMCA. Younger students can participate in the “Arts Buffet” camp, which lets 11- to 15-year-olds experiment with pottery, visual arts, dance and theater. A lot of arts classes and camps for this age group are very specialized and don’t allow kids to experiment with different media; the two-week arts buffet camp gives them a good tatse of many different at forms. “As an artist, it makes me feel good to offer hat osrt of vaired programming,” says Maragaret Edwartowski, Y-Arts director.

The media camp, which is for high school students, lets them use the city as their backdrop for real filmmaking projects. They will conceive, shoot, edit and screen a short film of their own making, using the Y’s high-tech media lab. “Even though it seems very specific, it encapsulates things you’d get from other forms of art, as well as reinforcing that collaboration idea using project-based learning — and they do get quite a lot of camera work out in the city,” Margaret says.

Both camps specifically reach out to older kids because there are fewer quality summer options for them, especially with arts camps.”This lets is include this underserved age group and get to show them how many different things they can do here,” she says.

The Arts Buffet Camp runs  from 9 am to 4 pm, July 9-19 with a showcase/exhibition on July 20 and costs $350 for members and $400 for non-members. Media Arts Camp runs  9 am-4 pm July 23 – August 9 with a screening on August 10.
Cost is $525 for both members and non-members. For more information, contact Margaret Edwartowski at medwartowski@ymcametrodetroit.org.