Our environmental clubs run during term time through partner schools, but school holidays leave a gap for children who want to stay involved, or whose school doesn't yet run a club. Our short holiday camp, run over several mornings during the school break, is our answer to that gap.
What a typical morning looks like
Sessions rotate through the same hands-on activities that work well in our school clubs: a waste-sorting exercise using real household waste, a visit to our tree nursery where children help pot seedlings under supervision, and a short planting session on one of our active corridor sites where camp attendees get to plant a tree themselves rather than simply watch adults do it.
We keep group sizes deliberately small, enough adult volunteers on hand that every child gets real hands-on time with each activity rather than watching from the back of a larger group. That's meant capping attendance more than we'd like, but it's produced a noticeably better experience for the children who do attend.
Why we run it despite the extra logistics
A holiday camp is more logistically demanding for a volunteer-run organisation than our regular term-time club sessions, more supervision, more equipment, a full morning rather than an hour-long session. We've kept running it because the children who attend tend to become some of our most enthusiastic future volunteers, several of our current youth nursery team members first got involved through an early version of this camp.
Camp dates for the next school holiday will be posted on our Get Involved page roughly a month ahead. Places are limited, so parents interested in enrolling a child are best reaching out early through our Contact page.