Since its founding in 2006, Camp Shriver Boston and the CSDE have partnered to bring campers from all backgrounds a high-quality, free, inclusive camp experience. Camp Shriver promotes the social, emotional, and physical well-being of children by fostering an inclusive community rooted in friendship and fun. Out of the approximately 100 children aged 8-12 who Camp serves each summer, half have disabilities and most come from economically-marginalized backgrounds and under-resourced communities in the Boston area. Camp Shriver ensures that all campers have the opportunity to build positive social relationships by learning and playing together.
This summer, Camp Shriver and the CSDE focused on enriching the Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) programming at camp. Although the development of social-emotional skills has always been a goal of Camp Shriver, SEL was intentionally targeted this year during scheduled blocks. During these blocks, I coached campers through engaging exercises from the “SEL Activity Cards” developed with Special Olympics. Each card is designed to embed a short, targeted social-emotional learning exercise into sports-based contexts. These activity cards taught campers SE skills such as teamwork, perseverance, self-reflection, and goal setting – all crucial for a great camp experience!
The annual evaluation of Camp Shriver also evolved this year. As in years past, researchers asked campers about their social relationships, their feelings of belonging at camp, and perceptions of their social emotional skills. However, unlike previous years, research assistants had the opportunity to spend all summer at camp – running SEL groups, getting to know campers, and participating in camp traditions. Embedding staff from the CSDE into everyday camp programming made it easier to collect high quality interview data, observational data, and pre-/post survey data. Most importantly, it created natural opportunities to develop relationships with campers, increasing camper comfort and participation in the evaluation. Given the success of this strategy, it is likely that CSDE staff will be spending future summer at camp as well.
Stay tuned for the Camp Shriver impact report, where you can read through the results of the evaluation and the impact of intentional SEL programming for campers!
By Staci Ballard, Graduate Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education