I recently had the opportunity to travel with my two children to North Carolina. This travel experience presented them with a basketful of positive experiences. During our week of travel, my kids were able to participate in two physical activity / sport camps in the Chapel Hill-Durham area of North Carolina. The programs guiding these successful camps were the Bouncing Bulldogs, Youth Hoops andChapel Hill Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. The week-long summer camps for my daughter and son, ages 7 and 9, respectively, allowed them to enjoy social, cultural and physical activity experiences but more importantly increased their self-confidence. Experiences such as these should be available to all children. While it may be reasonable to assume that youth do have such opportunities to attend quality programs in America, the truth is many youth do not have access or opportunities to such programs, especially summer programs (National Summer Learning Association, 2010).

A common thread among each of the three camps that my kids attended was the emphasis on building fundamental skills, both motor and social, in a supportive, encouraging environment. Many physical activity / sport-based programs today, to include summer camp programs, are focused on competition and performance rather than building essential life skills (i.e. motor, communication, cooperative). During the week of the camps, I witnessed, from the top-down, administrators and instructors committed to ensuring that children were placed in situations where they were learning fundamental skills in jump rope, basketball and martial arts, respectively, but more importantly skills in working together with different people, talking in front of an audience and even leading their peers in an exercise or routine, all in a non-to-low competitive, enriching environment.

One area of great concern and promise among humankind is resilience. Individuals in society, for a multitude of reasons, handle situations in different ways. For many, situations are challenges that provide opportunities to build and develop oneself for greater rewards and outcomes in the future. For these individuals they have the trait of resilience. For others, situations are obstacles that inhibit or prevent them from tapping into their potential and realizing positive, rewarding outcomes in their life. For these individuals they lack the trait of resilience. Research (Werner & Smith, 1982) has identified key factors that contribute to this all-important trait of resilience. These factors include high activity level, responsive to people, positive social orientation, age-appropriate sensorimotor and perceptual skills, adequate communication skills, special interests and hobbies, and a desire to improve oneself. Physical activity and sport, when presented in the right way, deliver many, if not all, these factors to children and youth in a fun approach and at a very important stage of their development, early in life. When children develop resilience they will become productive, beneficial members to society in most cases. To the contrary, when children do not develop resilience life becomes much more difficult and opportunities to contribute positively to society decrease significantly.

The Bouncing Bulldogs, Youth Hoops and Chapel Hill Gracie Jiu-Jitsu provide the type of experiences that all youth should be afforded. For some youth, it may be music, performing arts, science, or some other field and area of interest. But for youth who enjoy and thrive from all things physical and movement-related, physical activity / sport programs should be supported, encouraged, funded and sustained so that our society as a whole will become better. Undoubtedly, society will be better as a natural result of the resilient individuals that realize their self-worth as well as the worth of others in their social network. Let’s build the social capital in youth through positive, accessible programs that will benefit the youth and society for a lifetime.

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