WITH the start of the new school year fast approaching, participants of Camp Energy 2017 are being encouraged to avoid fights and other forms of indiscipline during the academic year.

Force Welfare Officer with the Barbados Defence Force (BDF), Harriet Clarke gave this advice as she spoke to The Barbados Advocate on the side-lines of the Camp’s Closing Ceremony on Friday.

She urged the campers, who are ages four to 14, to “do the right thing. Don’t get involved in the fights. If somebody does something to you then there is a course of action that you have to take. Make an official complaint, don’t take it into your own hands and try to extract your pound of flesh.”

The three-week Camp, which has a two-week residential component,has been annually staged for the past 11 years by the BDF.This year it attracted 106 registered campers,94 of whom took part in the residential aspect of the Camp. The theme on this occasion was “A Day In The Life”.

The youngsters during three weeks learnt skills such as how to make sugar cakes and how to play the steelpan. They were taught line dancing, leather craft and wool art. There were also visits to the magistrate court and the Geriatric Hospital. Additionally, there was a talk by the Barbados Road Safety Association as well
as discussions about personal hygiene and safe cyber use.

“We know that there are multiple intelligence out there amongst children and we try to make the programme as diverse as possible so we can offer the children a range skills,” stated Clarke while speaking at The Cadet Campsite, Paragon Base, Christ Church.

She pointed out that “programmes like this are definitely essential to expose children to what we will call prosocial behaviours.As you noticed with the awards that we gave, children might not be very incline to do chores at home, they might not be assigned chores or they may do it under protest but here you have to do it. When you are assigned to clean up the mess hall, when you are assigned to keep your barracks clean, you have to keep the environment tidy,we place a lot of emphasise on those things because we see that
as enhancing discipline and also ensuring that at the end of the day we have a citizen that is as well-developed and community minded and environmentally conscious as possible.”

During Friday’s proceedings, awards were presented to this year’s most outstanding campers.The Most Helpful and Best at Craft prizes went Kendra Lovell, the Most Improved prize was awarded to Ashantoria Cumberbatch and the Most Athletic (female) prize was given to Ashanti Blackman. The Green team won the Sports Award.