The week of July 12-16, 2010, The FCP Health and Wellness Center hosted a Youth on the Move Camp through a cooperative agreement for Health Promotion Disease Prevention. The camp was designed to help youth learn better ways to eat healthier and do physical activities on a daily basis.

Lisa Miller, FCP Health and Wellness dietician, along with Floreze Daniels, FCP Health and Wellness CHR, were in charge of the camp and helped to set up great activities that the youth could partake in during the week.

The age group for this week’s camp was 12-17 years old. Every morning of the camp, the kids either met at Campbell’s in Crandon or We Care in Carter. They were provided with a healthy breakfast and a health lesson on the food that they were eating. One morning, the youth learned how to try and taste something different that they may not have tasted before - a saucer peach. Miller explained that sometimes kids are not used to trying things that they think may not look good or haven’t had before. But with the taste test, many of the kids that never tried it, liked it! So with this, Miller asked all the youth to try to do three things that they would normally not do throughout the week, and this included bringing something different into their diets.

For three days out of the week, the camp attended Honey Rock Camp in Three Lakes, Wis. This camp provided great team building activities for the youth, which included archery, swimming, rock climbing, team participation games such as The Blob or human Paper, Rock, Scissors, and also helped with ways to communicate with one another in talking circles.

One of the days included a hike, which took the kids down long winding trails into the woods that led to a ropewalk across the lake. Everybody (including the PTT workers) took his or her try at walking across the rope hoping to not fall in. Once they got to the other end of the rope, they came to a small island where the youth were able to find chocolate treasures. Once they went back to land across the ropes from the island, Miller asked the youth to find something in the woods that they felt represented them. Some youth picked small plants or trees, while others looked for things out of the ordinary to represent themselves.

When the youth arrived back from camp to Campbell’s, they were able to prepare their own meals with the help of Theresa Marvin along with Miller and Daniels. What was on the menu? Healthy foods such as wild rice and chicken, vegetables, tacos, salad, homemade egg rolls as part of a Chinese dinner theme and also had their try at some of Cathy Chitko’s delicious omelets.

Other activities throughout the week included more swimming and team participation games including challenging games where participants could see who could walk the most as a way to learn how to use a pedometer and to track how many steps were taken.

Friday concluded the week’s camp with a cookout for all of the participants. The next youth camp took place the following week (July 19-23, 2010), which was for youth ages 7-13 years old.

Congratulations to all of the youth who came out and participated in both youth camps. You helped your body learn different types of fun as well as learning lots of different types of food that are fun to make and delicious.

Article by George Tuckwab IV & Lori Thomas