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I am the director of a small camp in Central
Florida. We are in the process of creating a CIT program for our 9th graders who completed
their camper days last summer. I would welcome any suggestions or ideas. THANK YOU !

I ran a CIT program at my camp (in Ontario) last summer. We did a lot of team building activities and really tried to focus on letting the CITs be able to lead each other confidently and stressed the importance of evaluation during and after the activity. If you want to know some specifics, you can email me, JessiLinnTaylor@hotmail.com

Jessi,Thank you for your reply. I would like more specifics and will e-mail you with my address. MJM

I was a CIT last year, at a day camp, so the program might be a little bit different then at a residential camp.

The "course" part of the program had seminars that involved leadership, behavior management, safety and trust.

I think the course part, where we had seminars, but also had a chance to talk about the cabins we were with and issues we were having was great.

I also would be interested in your information. Our CIT program needs a lot of work! Thanks

We instituted a CIT program over 14 years ago, that has resulted in a very small staff turnover and a really very dedicated group of people to our camp. To share some of our experiences - It was difficult to begin, but perhaps by starting with an overall goal and some objectives, may help. For example our goal was to develop the potential of our CITS to enable them to be leaders at camp and within their own communities. With that we developed a twelve-step program of two weeks, first starting on hard skills, then soft skills. We have multiple objectives from which we based experiential activities, and lessons about leadership and working at camp. We really use the program as a springboard to helping them develop into mature staff, so the program while it is fun, is also serious and starts to treat them as professionals with guidance. They don't work very much with the children until the second week, where they are totally supervised, as the first week focuses on again hard skills, but all of those critical things that CITs need to know before working with kids - for example, risk management, age characteristics of different campers, behavioral issues, discipline and camper management and so on. Hopefully this will give you some idea. If you need further info. please feel free to e-mail me. Good Luck!

I wrote a CIT program 2 years ago for a summer camp in the US, which is now used in a bespoke leadership program in Scotland. The program is fun and educational both to teach and take part in. It has had a fantastic response from those who have gone through the program and has produced positive results.
If you would be interseted in seeing the program or discussing it further please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Hope it all goes well,
Jen

Has anyone written a manual for the CIT's. I'm in the process of working on this at the moment and would appreciate any feedback.

It is also beneficial to take the CITS and visit other local camps (if that is possible for you) and then help the CITS discuss similarities and differences between their home camp and the camps they visited.

I am pretty sure I have one not too outdated (maybe three to five years old) I'll look for it and get back to you.

Also consider doing a search in the "Camp Counselors" forum for CIT and you will get a lot more ideas and resources.

As a graduate of my camp's CIT program 18 years ago, I can say with confidence it was one of the best experiences of my life.

Good luck!

We’re a small traditional residential all-girls camp in North Carolina. I’m hoping to gather thoughts from other camps that use a CIT program on the idea of requiring this program for all new counselors under 18 years of age. This means for those who just finished their last year as a camper (our traditional approach) and for those new staff under 18 who were never a camper or skipped the traditional CIT year (proposed to be included in our new approach). What is your camp’s approach to the CIT program? Do you have age requirements? If so, how do you validate them? If not, how do you assure that new staff are properly oriented to the same level as returning staff, and what special considerations do you make for new staff under 18? Are there any other special considerations that you have for CITs and/or under 18 staff? Why do you see these precautions as necessary or unnecessary?

Thanks in advance for your help. I’m interested to learn other peoples’ thoughts on this.

Another note - we're not yet accredited but are working on getting our accreditation this summer. I haven't found any specific requirements on this from the ACA, but if you do know of any, please pass on the links!