Military-Extension Adventure Camp Initiative

This project will address national Adventure Camp goals by bringing service member parents and their teenage children together for educational, fun, and engaging experiential learning opportunities that advance the life skills of self-responsibility, decision making, resiliency, cooperation, responsible citizenship, and problem solving. The primary life skill to be targeted will be "adapting to change/resiliency." As service members return from deployment, they must reintegrate into family life and catch up to the developmental levels of their children. This postdeployment stage requires a great deal of adaptation on the part of family members as the service member reintegrates into their lives. Roles and responsibilities must shift along with their reentry into the family. Focused time together as parent and child at these camps will help the youth and their parents in learning how to reconnect and adapting to the changes that inevitably occurred in each person during their absence from one another. In addition to targeting the life skill of adapting to change/resiliency, these camps also will target each of the other life skills listed above as the parent-child duos reconnect and work together as a team to achieve goals through the activities, programs, and challenges presented through the camps. 2. Describe how the Adventure Camp Team has been involved in the definition