Growing up is hard to do. With pressures from school, friends, family, extracurricular activities, and technology, camp can be the perfect getaway for boys and girls to learn about themselves while they learn about others in a single-sex environment.
For many campers, the school year is spent in anticipation of the weeks or even months spent at summer camp. Fresh air, physical activities, and lifelong friendships are commonly found in all residential camps, and give city-dwelling kids a precious opportunity to unplug and unwind. But single-sex camps provide another benefit that may hinder a child’s development throughout the year—the pressure to impress.
Single-sex camps let boys be boys, and girls be girls
To Pauline Hodgetts, owner, director, and operator of all-boys Camp Hurontario since 1978, the biggest and most obvious advantage to a single-gender environment is the opportunity to build self-confidence.
“There is no judgment at a single sex camp, be it actual or surmised by a child,
particularly once they get into an age where they’re very aware of who they are and what they look like,” she says. “It’s a great bonding environment of guys and guys, girls and girls, without having to looking over their shoulder.”
“I don’t think it’s conscious,” says Jaqui Raill, director of the all-girls camp Camp Ouareau in Quebec. “It’s such a pressured life girls lead— university, school, who they are, what they want to be…they can let themselves go because there isn’t that extra pressure of the opposite gender.”
All decisions at Camp Ouareau are made with the girls in mind, including the all-female staff trained to help girls explore sensitive issues in healthy and beneficial ways.
“Words hold power, we know how to discuss things with the girls. We think before we speak things like ‘This cake will go right to my butt.’ They can talk about pressures, body image, appropriate role models, and nutrition with healthy young women who are active, eat well, and not obsessed with their bodies,” Raill says.
Camp staff believes in the single sex environment
Camp Ouareau’s staff and alumni are also inspirations to young campers who can look up to friends that become environmentalists, doctors, teachers, and spend their time volunteering and giving back to the world. As a staff member since 1975, Raill firmly believes in the all-girls camp experience.
“The reason I’m still here and have the same passion I had when I arrived, is that so many of these girls leave camp with so much more knowing of themselves, so much more confidence, even if its just for one session,” she says.
Hodgetts is equally passionate when she speaks about how she sees boys develop independence and self-confidence, no matter what personality type.
“There is no need for ‘stars’ because everybody has an opportunity to shine,” She says. “Camp is an opportunity to not have to worry about that, every boy can grow and succeed in that he is doing what he as an individual wants to do.”
Parents interested in single-sex overnight camps can meet with representatives from some of the best at the Our Kids Summer Camp Expo on February 26, 2012. Visit the Kids Camp Expo for more information.
