The unique Wilderness Adventure Programs at Scottie’s Place are designed to enhance the physical, emotional and intellectual development of all participants. Outdoor adventure builds self-esteem, increases stamina and endurance and fosters determination and adaptability. Children experience new challenges and opportunities, discover unknown talents and resources within themselves. Scottie’s Place strives to impart a new sense of responsibility in children toward themselves, their community and the earth.
Scottie’s Place provides hands-on education and confidence-building programs in a supportive, trusting and safe environment with an emphasis on developing life skills that will remain with the children long after they have left camp. Children learn to grow and gather food, use tools, care for animals, succeed individually and as a team. Camp leaders work with children to encourage problem solving, goal setting, effective communication and cooperation. While at Scottie’s Place a child will bake bread, plant a tree, build a shelter, lead an expedition. The elemental nature of survival skills and wilderness adventure builds inner strength and offers children a new sense of connection to this planet earth, our home.
Scottie’s Place purposefully combines the therapeutic concepts of special-needs programs with wilderness adventure. Special-needs camps have a proven track record for improving the lives of the participants. There are thousands of camps in the United States and around the world that address the special needs of children with chronic illnesses, children with developmental and physical challenges, children who have experienced violence in their homes and communities. Special-needs camps help children regain control of their lives.
Wilderness adventure programs are able to make a powerful and lasting impact in a very short time. Outward Bound, BOSS Schools, Eckerd Camp Systems and others have successfully used the challenge of wilderness adventure to produce life changing experiences for the participants. Campers immersed in an intense, dramatically different environment are shocked into a new awareness. Children who experience Scottie’s Place gain a new perspective on their lives and futures.
