Setting a Foundation for Healthy Relationships
© Next Gen Men 2017
By Jonathon Reed
Camp taught me to put my values up front.
If this year had unfolded as planned, I would be at camp right now, watching something really special take place, something that takes place every year, in the hours and days after the campers first arrive: the transformation of counsellors and campers from strangers to role models, teammates, and friends.
Watching a cabin group come together can sometimes seem like magic, but it’s actually design. It starts as soon as the first families trickle in through the forest, and as soon as the buses from the city finally turn onto our gravel road. It starts with values.
At my camp, where I’ve worked the past several summers as Head Counsellor, our values are the first thing families and campers see when they arrive. You can’t miss them: they’re carved into the welcome sign. When cabin groups come together, one of the first things counsellors will do is put the group’s values on paper. It’s like a summertime social contract, and it sets the tone for everything that comes next.
Values can be both culture and compass. They can be a foundation, to help a group build friendship, trust and respect. They can also help set expectations and communicate boundaries. For a cabin full of boys it can mean the difference between weeks of harmony and years of friendship, or connections that start to fray as soon as they’re made.
“Young children experience their world as an environment of relationships, and these relationships affect virtually all aspects of their development.”
I’ve had all this on my mind in launching NGM Summer Camp this week. Even though we’re running it on a Discord server online, in many ways it was a lot like that first day of camp. The boys started to trickle in. We chatted, we hung out, we got to know each other. We learned some of each other’s likes and dislikes, what they love and what they want to learn about. Even though no one was in the same room, and some were in completely different corners of the continent, I saw the same bonds start to form in the same old way.
Understanding the characteristics of healthy relationships is a major part of Next Gen Men’s mission. When we talk about healthy relationships in our youth programs, one of the things we talk about is setting a strong foundation—being upfront about boundaries, expectations and purpose.
NGM Summer Camp’s ‘welcome sign’ is a direct message that includes our group norms, which I co-created with some of the participants before the camp started. One of the expectations they set was that no one would get made fun of for their interests.
In the midst of getting to know each other yesterday, one of the boys mentioned anime. “No way,” said another participant. “Anime is not my thing.”
As I was wondering what I should say to intervene, he started typing again. “You can still like it though,” he added. “Don’t feel ashamed. We can all like different things.”
To me, that is what culture and compass look like together. They’re not perfect but they are earnest. They encourage boys to look out for each other, and they create habits of empathy and courage that will last a lifetime.
P.S. No, it’s not too late to register for NGM Summer Camp. Join in now, join in later, join in if and when and however you want—flexibility and freedom is part of what makes the program special.
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