Mission Possible:

The Camp Medley Leadership Challenge

By Liz Harding

You are one of a group of 20 people standing around a two-foot by two-foot wooden platform. Your mission (and you must accept it) is to get everyone’s feet off the ground and on the platform at the same time for at least 10 seconds. That’s your challenge for day one. On day two you and the other 19 are loaded down with supplies and have to cross a shark-infested river on planks that you must take with you to the other side. On day three you need to balance 10 people to a side on planks perched on a fulcrum without letting any of the wood touch the ground. And if you can’t get a couple of feet on the platform, or someone falls in the shark infested water, or one of the balanced planks touches the ground, another challenge or two — like blindfolds or no verbal communication — are added to the original challenge. And so goes at the Camp Medley annual leadership challenge.

So, how can you get 20 people and 40 feet on a two by two foot platform for 10 seconds? How do you get across the shark-infested river on planks that you have to take with you? And how do you balance 10 people on what amounts to a teeter-totter without one side touching the ground? And for that matter, how do you lob full water balloons over the roof of the nurse's hut so they can be caught in a sheet held on the other side by team mates you can't see? (That was the day five challenge. Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out — when it’s your turn to face such a challenge! But I’ll tell you some of the things we do to help our campers succeed.

We limit registration to 16 campers (ages 14-16) and four staff. And although it all sounds like Mission Impossible, actually some of the challenges are easily —well, maybe not easily, but perhaps readily — overcome with the right approach. And most of the time that approach is worked out by the team, working together, communicating effectively. All the team members have to share ideas, and that can worry some of them, they feel vulnerable suggesting an idea if they aren’t certain it will work. But they won’t know until they try.

Sometimes it is necessary to appoint a task leader who to take responsibility for the challenge, to make sure everyone’s voice is heard. Sometimes the team needs a strategy before it can even attempt the task, because sometimes once the task starts no one is allowed to talk. Occasionally there is a time limit too. As team members we learn quickly that if even one member of us checks out either mentally or physically during a challenge, the team is weakened. When even one of us doesn’t step up, the whole team suffers.

The Leadership Challenge program at Medley is one of the most successful we have introduced. Each year we see young people’s lives change as they discover their own leadership gifts and skills, as they learn how to use those skills to positively influence the world in which they live. Each day is spent accomplishing amazing things, overcoming new and exciting challenges, and learning how to use what they learn as a Christian outside of the camp environment.

This year I was very pleased to have my son Simon Harding join us to lead the challenge activities. Simon is well trained in experiential learning and challenge by choice activities. He really challenged the young people every day to dig deep and find the hidden resources that many of them didn’t know they possessed.

Each activity also led into a time of teaching about how to recognize our unique God-given gifts and to celebrate in them. We explored different spiritual practices, talked about how we can develop these practices to help live the Christian life. We also discussed ways in which we can develop and plan for a future with God at the centre of our lives, and to keep God at the centre of our decision-making. Each team member is asked to write a personal mission statement during the week, and at the end of the week we have a final talk on how to take what we have learned and live being true to ourselves as a Christians.

The things I have described here are just a taste of what we all experienced together during the week of August 7- 12. By the end of it we were all so tried could hardly see straight, but we had all worked hard together and learned many wonderful things about ourselves and our walk with God.

Liz Harding is director of Camp Medley.

 

20 September 2011
Diocesan Communications