https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/innovation-work-2024-eleanor-p-eells-award-winners

Each year, ACA’s Eleanor P. Eells Award for Program Excellence honors camps that embody the spirit of the award’s namesake through their efforts to provide exceptional programming that effectively...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/camp-counselor-self-care-guide-emotional-physical-well-being

As a camp counselor, you have many responsibilities to juggle, including home life, camp life, and life after camp. It’s important to prioritize your physical and emotional health, as they are...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/five-essentials-supporting-staff-mental-health-well-being

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define mental health as “your emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It can therefore affect every stage of life and impact how you...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/lost-boys-finding-their-way-summer-camp

Are boys in crisis? Popular literature (Raising Cain, Lost Boys, Boys and Sex) and theater (Dear Evan Hansen) seem to suggest so. Terms such as “boy code” and “toxic masculinity” further paint a path...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/considerations-implementing-mental-health-behavioral-supports-camp

If you’ve been thinking about adding behavioral or mental health supports to your program, you’ve also probably realized that the devil is in the details. Supporting mental, emotional, and social...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/evolution-neurodiversity-interview-steve-silberman

Camping Magazine recently spoke with Steve Silberman, New York Times best-selling author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/safe-space-trauma-informed-trauma-infused-what-know-how-help

Across the land, schools and summer camps have embraced a movement to better understand trauma and how it affects a child’s ability to learn and self-regulate their behavior. As that knowledge...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/continuous-improvement-program-quality-lessons-learned-part-two

As established in the first “Lessons Learned” article (...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/continuous-improvement-program-quality-lessons-learned

Program quality (PQ) is essential to youth programs, and research shows that high-quality programs are directly linked to more positive outcomes. PQ refers to the environment that is created at...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/evaluating-bereavement-camps

Spending time in nature is often therapeutic and provides many benefits, such as improving cognitive functioning (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008) and improving memory (Berto, 2005). Spending...