Mountain Meadow Programs: Diversity and Leadership Training
Diversity and Leadership training is a three part program offered to teen campers during their stay at Mountain Meadow.
Part 1 – Teen Trip!
For two days of the summer program, the teens pack their bags and leave camp for a teambuilding and leadership development experience. During this adventure, teens are guided through a sequence of activities that focus on cooperation, respect for self and others, problem solving, valuing diversity, and working towards a common goal.
During the first day of the program, teens tackle the "low elements" which focus on developing skills in teamwork and cooperation. On the second day, teens are physically and emotionally challenged to use their learning from the day before to complete a variety of "high element" courses. Teen campers and staff (of all physical abilities) support each other in the challenge. Over the years, the Teen Trip has become one of the most memorable events of the summer camp experience.
Part 2 - Building Bridges
This day long session delivers oppression and privilege awareness training for the teens and SITs. Working from a framework for understanding the interconnections of different forms of oppression, the interactive activities intentionally draw on participants' personal experience to illustrate the effects of oppression on people's lives. Participants are asked to reflect on how these forces have affected their lives, and how their actions in turn affect the lives of others. The goal of Building Bridges is to allow campers to recognize the power they have to either perpetuate or challenge oppression in their communities by using the tools of social activism.
Part 3 - Creating Change
Using new found leadership skills and awareness of oppression and privilege, the final half-day training seeks to help participants become agents of social change. Developing skills of nonviolent social change through fun and experiential learning strategies, teens and SITs are encouraged to create change - first - in the camp community. These exercises help youth impact improvements in their relationships with their families, with teachers, students and administrators in their school communities, and with friends and peers in their neighborhoods.
Year-round
Teen field trips, to New York or Washington D.C., help connect youth with other groups of youth from LGBTQ families, via our partnership with COLAGE - Children of Gays and Lesbians Everywhere. Throughout the year, we encourage ongoing strengthening of teens' leadership and communication skills and provide opportunities for them to be role models and to further exercise their ability to influence social change.