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What a week we have had with our Discovery Camp programs! This week we are taking groups of YMCA campers from the Greater Boston area to the Black Heritage Trail, a part of the Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston. The North Slope of the Beacon Hill neighborhood was known to the free black community of Boston in the 1800s and includes the homes and meeting places of many abolitionists. 

As you can imagine with heavy topics including race, slavery, and equality it can be tough for campers who want to play games and have fun in the summer to engage effectively with this content. Our Youth Conservation Corps employees of the Hill to Harbor Program have been really great getting used to working with campers and trying to keep our days fun and engaging. This year we have tried a few new activities to see how the engagement goes and so far they’ve been working really well! 

One activity our youth employees created was a name decoder for Boston area activists. The campers must decode a name and then go find that name written on the ground surrounding the Embrace memorial on the Boston Common. The Embrace memorial is a sculpture dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr and his wife Coretta Scott King. This summer, as the days in Boston continue to grow hotter, we’ve had to take weather mitigations into account which have included not walking the entirety of the Black Heritage Trail. This has given us the opportunity to utilize other spaces such as the Embrace and focus on a theme of art and togetherness with the campers. They each were given a piece of clay to sculpt a memorial or art piece to represent a cause that they cared about. 

Embrace Boston Digital Experience

We also have been fortunate enough to partner with staff at the Museum of African American History (MAAH) to utilize that space with campers to help them cool off while still engaging with the themes of togetherness, resiliency, and utilize the Sanctuary space to help connect everything they’re learning. In the Sanctuary we’ve been able to have campers participate in a singing activity that would represent the original use of the space. The YCC staff and my colleagues have led campers in learning two lines from the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice, through a responsorial singing. 

Overall with the changes we’ve included this summer the campers are interacting in a fun and positive way with the content and site that we have had challenges with in the past. It’s great to see new ideas come to light and help everyone through it all!