Chalk art from a Teen Camp session.
Chalk art from a Teen Camp session.
It is never too soon to talk to kids and teens about healthy relationships. This summer the WCA is partnering with the City of Boise and their “Out and About Teen Summer Camp”. This camp runs weekly and offers a variety of activities to do including STEM activities, art, fun games and trips around the city. The camp is open for youth between 6th through 9th grade. The WCA’s Prevention Program provides biweekly programming as a part of the summer camp with activities focusing on healthy relationships, trust, team building, recognizing emotions and strong communication.
What is the Prevention Program for the Women’s and Children’s Alliance? For the WCA, prevention is to engage and educate community members to spot unhealthy or potentially abusive relationships before they begin and build healthy relationship skills. This includes empowering people to build skills to have strong communication, build self-worth and boundaries. The Prevention Program provides curriculum, classroom presentations and various other types of programming to Treasure Valley youth to highlight the importance of all healthy romantic, familial and friend relationships.
The WCA’s prevention program has participated in a large variety of activities at Teen Camp so far this summer. First, the youth at Teen camp participated in a chalk art activity to describe what they believe is important in any healthy relationship- the responses ranged from “being kind”, “being helpful” and “express yourself”. The prevention team also participated in a variety of other activities partnering with this camp from doing the team building exercise “The Human Knot” for communication and trust to having fun with Emoji Charades (acting out emotions). These fun activities simulate aspects of being in a healthy relationship such as self-worth, respect, consent, emotional intelligence and boundaries.
If you are interested in having these conversations with your kids, check out these great resources:
How to Talk to Youth About Healthy Relationships
How to Talk to Teens About Dating Violence
If you are interested in enrolling in Out and About Teen Camp, sign up here.
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