When I say Character you say Development

Let's talk about Character Development!

The Character Development Learning Institute (CDLI) is a grant that Mystic Lake YMCA Camp received initially for our summer camp program. CDLI has five areas of focus, they are:
Emotion Management - Empathy - Personal Development - Relationship Building - Responsibility 



YMCA of the USA partnered with CDLI to fill the Character Development gap. These five focus areas were proven to be the most important for the CDLI and Y-USA felt their organization's values and practices aligned as well. 

After receiving the grant, Mystic Lake implemented different improvements into our 2019 summer program to incorporate Character Development into the curriculum. An example is All About Me sheets - these are papers campers filled out to tell their cabin a few different things about them to help build relationships and there is a spot for a weekly goal to incorporate personal development. These sheets were created to show similarities and differences of campers living in the same cabin and to start conversations to create deeper connections. Our staff training and materials provided to staff were also strengthened to  provide more knowledge to staff to improve the experience offered to campers.

We have now received a second grant for our Outdoor Education program and cannot wait to continue utilizing it! 
There are ways all five focus areas can fit into what we do here during Outdoor Education. The areas are listed below with examples and descriptions:

Personal Development ⟶ Verbally identifying and writing goals of campers can be a good way to create goals and help youth see and understand their personal development. Staff and peers following up with youth about goals and progress made can help hold youth accountable to increase motivation and positive results. Setting climbing goals on the rock wall or an overall goal for the duration at camp.  

Empathy ⟶ Accommodating different needs and wants within activities. Tailoring activity choices and curriculum taught in activities to make them more relevant to what they are learning in school and that it correlates with their age. 

Relationship Building ⟶ We are able to help youth grow friendships with one another through use of team building and conversations we get started. At camp, we encourage both new and old relationship building and provide opportunities for kids to form said relationships.



Emotion Management ⟶ Allowing time to debrief at activities and being sure to stress how important understanding, recognizing, and identifying emotions are.

Responsibility ⟶ We can teach youth to be more responsible and the importance of using it in the things we do. Ways to do this way by providing them with leadership roles and giving them more ways to be helpful.




Growth within our curriculum is very important. There are so many ways to incorporate more character development into our programs here at Mystic Lake! Thanks for reading!!