St. Croix camp empowering students
The Virgin Islands Daily News :: Cristian Simescu
Local and visiting students are spending part of their summer sharing experiences and being empowered.
About 25 students, ages 12 to 16, have participated in the five-week Youth Empowerment Summer Camp at the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute, located at Creque Dam Farm in St. Croix’s rain forest, through exposure to organic farming, music, arts and crafts.
The campers include students from the V.I. Department of Labor’s Lifeskills and Career Exploration Summer Program and visiting stateside students from Overland Summer Program. The Overland program, based out of Williamstown, Mass., is intended for 11- to 18-year-old students from all over the country for community service, outdoors activities, language study abroad and writing programs. The visiting students also volunteered at several nonprofit organization across the island.
Lifeskills and Career Exploration program director Nate Olive said the summer camp is part of the natural mentors program at the organization, where they invite schools from around the island to participate throughout the year.
“The goal of the program is to spark a heritage renaissance in the youth here in the Virgin Islands and to re-link the generations to help discover the identity of where we’ve been and where we are going,” Olive said.
“One of the major parts is empowerment, so we teach empowerment skills, like growing your own food and self-expression through culturally relevant music, like drumming,” he said. Olive also said the students learned about nature by becoming more aware of your environment and appreciative of life.
Olive said the campers learned to plant and harvest vegetables and fruits at the organic farm, as well as how to make juices and teas and cook what they harvested. He also said they learned to make things from the trees and plants on the farm that are needed on the farm, such as net bags, fruit pickers, fish spears and bamboo tree stands.
Campers also are required to lead a workshop once a week.
Shelli Brin, a counselor at the camp, said it was an honor to witness how the students have blossomed during the course of the summer.
“They’re being creative; they’re tasting things they never have before and pushing themselves to try new things,” Brin said. “Kids that have been scared of bugs are now catching bugs, cleaning off chicken eggs and leading workshops.”
The camp is co-sponsored by Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism.
The Sustainable Farm Institute’s Natural Mentors program was named one of 10 finalists, from more than 600 entries from around the world, in the second annual Geotourism Challenge competition last year. The competition was sponsored by the National Geographic Society and Ashoka’s Changemakers, an online community for social innovation.
