It was great to welcome everyone back together for another successful minicamp this September, some new faces were present which was great to see! This camp’s theme was ‘Silly Superheroes: spring into Action’, focusing on how our talents make us all unique and allow everyone to bring something to the table.
ACTIVITY ONE
The junior activity introduced the “Silly Superheroes” camp theme to the younger group of children. The kids were instructed to think of someone who was a ‘superhero’ to them, such as a parent or someone they look up to. The participants were encouraged to think of the qualities that define superheroes and what differentiates a superhero from a supervillain. They then drew themselves as a superhero with a superpower representing something they are good at or a talent they have. These were hung on the wall of the main hall for everyone to see for the remainder of the camp.
For the JB, activity one was a debate, facilitated by Cushla, Liam, Louis and
Eva. The JB were split into four groups where they discussed different debate topics, coming up with arguments for the opinions they were given, eg. space exploration is a good idea. The groups chose a different representative each time to debate with another group’s representative. At the end, the four groups combined to create two mega groups that debated one final topic together – and
each group created an interpretive dance to support their points.
ACTIVITY TWO
Activity two for the juniors was facilitated by Lucie and Sam and focused on team work when resolving conflict. Each team had to work together to complete different activities as fast as they could to earn resources to rebuild their city. But there was a twist! One team was given an advantage to earn resources faster than the other teams which caused conflict between the teams. A group discussion was held to give teams the opportunity to share resources and resolve the conflict.
Activity two for the JB was called “Economy Builder,” and was facilitated by Ruby and Kelly. Each group had to manage their resources wisely to work towards team-specific goals, aiming to get the most points before the timer went off. Players earned points by building and upgrading locations, relying on resource generation from rolling numbers that were on the board. The game reflected real-world economic principles, highlighting the importance sustainable resource management. The timer in the game would lose
time when the community and tourism teams built locations but the timer period would increase when the environmental team built locations. The aim of this activity was for the participants to understand the importance of sustainability in the game and in the real world, and to pay attention to the climate clock.
ACTIVITY THREE
For the juniors, activity three was based on contaminants, facilitated by one of our leaders Olive! Each group had to build a town and contaminate the other
team’s towns with their given contaminant. After contaminating the cities, each
group came back to their own town and tried to reverse these effects. The aim was to show how pollution and contamination can try to be removed from things, but might not go back to their original state.
JB activity three was facilitated by Ana, Ellie and Ruby. It was about conflict resolution, learning about the different sides of conflict and how to resolve and prevent it. The participants were presented with both written and performed conflicts to discuss, and then were given the opportunity to make their own topic related skits where they resolved a conflict.
ACTIVITY FOUR
Abi, Danni, and Grac’s activity for the juniors focused on different types of communication. The activity was split into multiple parts to display different communication types. The key things that we focussed on were non-verbal communication through drawing and actions, positive versus negative feedback, and regulating emotions when in communication with others to benefit relationships! This was done through a lot of moving around and practicing active listening.
The activity for the JB was called “Living Our Values” and was facilitated by Anahera. The goal of the activity was to remind everyone the importance of values. We highlighted the CISV values which are followed globally and created
our own New Zealand Junior Branch values which all participants agreed with. Participants individually reflected upon their own values and wrote action statements to help bring those values into their daily lives. In groups they
collaborated and discussed what values are important to our community and how we can incorporate them into our camps.
SATURDAY SKIT NIGHT
Skit night was based around the fairy queen and was facilitated by Kelly and Ella. The Fairy queen had fallen deathly ill, and each skit group had to make a remedy to cure her. Every group was given a spice, like cinnamon, and a song they had to sing to make the spices come to life! In the end, all the remedies were mixed together to save the queen.
SUNDAY ACTIVITIES
The first part of the Sunday activity was run by the Youth Meeting delegation. The activity was a take on “capture the flag”, a well-loved classic running game in which we added a few character twists. It was the first time our Youth Meeting delegates had planned and facilitated an activity!
Following this, Sean and Christophe ran a quiz based activity for the whole camp where we completed a series of tasks in groups relating to their 10 year minicamp anniversary, with drawings, roasts and some awesome dance moves!
We’d like to extend a special thanks to the leaders Francois, Olive, Grac, Lucie, Danni, Abby, Sarita, Sam and Abi, with acknowledgment for the National Junior Representatives Anahera and Lucie, for all their hard work to ensure this camp ran as smoothly as possible!
CISV New Zealand 