Peak Performance
With the help from an REI grant, ACA-accredited summer camps are expanding their environmental programs.
The unique worlds of children’s summer camps are right at the intersection of outdoor recreation and environmental stewardship, positioned perfectly to educate the next generation about the universal Leave No Trace (LNT) principles and ethics that might do no less than
determine the fate and future of the environment. Today’s campers are tomorrow’s environmental stewards. In an effort to make the seven LNT principles and ethics universal and to teach a common language to the next generation, ACA New England distributed 100 Speak PEAK Packs to one hundred different camps. Thanks to a generous grant from REI, these 100 camps received packs full of lesson plans, online resources to provide to families and to supplement their own libraries, and an environmentally friendly backpack tags to give to participating campers. Our goal was to engage 150 campers at each participating camp, so that 15 thousand campers would learn PEAK principles this summer.
Leave No Trace’s 7 Principles have been transformed into kid friendly, easily understood, memorable phrases, like “Trash your Trash” and “Leave What You Find”. Camps rolled out the program in a variety of ways: some incorporated the curriculum into a Nature Discovery program they had in place already, tweaking it to fit their needs. Other camps realized they really didn’t have a program in place and used Speak PEAK as a beginning point, a framework to develop a new program. Three versions of the curriculum were available: the Original Pack contained activities geared toward younger audiences; the Teen Pack boasted activities geared toward older campers, with conversation points revolving around ethics; and the Family Pack had a smorgasbord of activities for all ages. Each Pack included a large group activity which could accommodate up to 100 people.
Next steps? ACA New England received another grant from REI, with the goal of extending our reach and specifically targeting New England’s underserved urban campers and camps. Camps are not only in the woods, after all. Not all camps have waterfronts. But nature is everywhere, our environment is a constant, and the importance of conservation and stewardship is a message that everyone needs to understand and incorporate. With this reality in mind, we are reaching out to 50 more camps in urban New England and taking it to the streets!
Questions? Want to get involved? Call Jenny at 781-541-6080
To learn more about Leave No Trace’s PEAK program, click here. Some camps have offered us lesson plans they created as extrapolations from the PEAK program. Click on any of the topics below to see ideas for a related activity: