Health camp “Belarus”

Health camp “Belarus” has been open since 1957. The camp territory covers 10.8 hectares and is located in the green area of mixed forests.

The camp facilities include 21 buildings (bedroom blocks, a canteen, a club, office buildings, warehouses and the back regions), an equipped playing-field, a water tower and a boiler room.

300 children aged from 6 to 16 can have a rest in the camp per one shift. 56 teachers and 50 members of the service staff take care of the camp functioning.

In the course of each shift, the work with children is conducted in the camp in the following areas:

1. Ideological and educational work;
2. Formation of the system of values and a healthy lifestyle;
3. Organization of work for guarantee of safe environment for children in educational and recreational institutions.

Health Camp “Belarus” is intended to provide a full and meaningful leisure and recreation of children, as well as to solve problems of their development and education. The camp participants have the opportunity to satisfy the interest for a particular field of knowledge, creativity or arts combined with a health-improving rest in the company of peers, to demonstrate their abilities and talent, make new friends, and a new social experience.

Constant development of a child has become one of the central ideas of the camp work. The fulfillment of this idea was possible under condition of the implementation of the principle of free choice when diverse, creative activity affected the sphere of a child's feelings, and allowed him to see himself as an individual.

When implementing parenting programs for children who need health improvement, the following principles for the organization and content of the activity were adhered to:

1. The principle of types, forms and content diversity of the activities designed for the dominant abilities, interests and needs (intellectual and cognitive, artistic and creative, organizational and leadership).
2. The principle of freedom and creativity, children are expected to have the choice of cognitive activity, the way and the rate of advancement in the learning of chosen activity; forms and methods of life organization in the team, participation in leisure and entertainment activities; the choice of the role in the preparation of common goal; the choice of participation forms in recreational programs.
3. The principle of social activity through the involvement of teenagers in socially meaningful activities in the course of diverse educational, recreational, sports and leisure activities.
4. The principle of interconnection between pedagogical management and self-management, the implementation of which involves the formation of temporary creative groups, services among adults and children on the organization, promotion, and covering the life in the camp.

Aspects of ideological and educational work in the camp were carried out through:

• civil and patriotic education;
• labor education;
• the formation of basic cultural values of a person;
• active involvement of students in activities in order to acquire social and vital experience, development of ways of organizing their own life activity;
• family relationships education;
• stepping up children's and youth public associations functioning.