Magic when kids camp out
TUCKED away in the wheatbelt of Western Australia, a small town is home to a youth camp turning young lives around.
Camp Kulin was established five years ago and hosts summer camps for children between the ages of eight and 12, with special programs for kids affected by trauma.
The camp’s founder Tanya Dupagne, who was the 2017 AgriFutures Australian Rural Woman of the Year, has just won a Westpac Scholars Trust fellowship worth $50,000.
The money is earmarked for personal development, and she hopes boosting her own skills will help her expand the program, and maybe look at establishing camps interstate.
“Our results are ranked as some of the best in the country. I want to see us become the best in the world because our kids deserve that,” Ms Dupagne said.
The facility offers general camps, similar to summer camps run in America, which parents can pay for their children to attend.
“Then we run our scholarship camps that are for kids affected by trauma or a torture situation,” she said.
“So we work with kids who have been through domestic violence, sexual assault, kids who have been in refugee camps overseas who have now settled in Australia, and kids bereaved by suicide.”
At the camp, children learn life skills.
“We teach leadership, respect, trust, selfconfidence, self-esteem, emotional regulation, anger management and perseverance,” she said.
However, Ms Dupagne assured it was all a swag of fun.
“Our blind-folded maze teaches perseverance,” she said.
“We have a My Kitchen Rules course where we get the kids into small groups and they have to cook a threecourse meal.
“It’s always an interesting one. They think it’s fun, but they are learning teamwork, perseverance and learning to listen to other people’s ideas.”
They also have a dodgeball kit that helps teach anger management.
With $50,000 in the kitty to spend on personal development, Ms Dupagne is heading straight to the States.
She has selected some of the best summer camps in the world to visit.
Her main stops include Texas, Boston and Chicago.
“The demand for our program is there nationally,” she said.
“I get phone calls all the time from people interstate asking if we can run programs in their states. We are the only camp like this in Australia I am aware of.”
The results are speaking for themselves.
“We have been running five years and my first group of campers who came through, so they were 12 or 13, that group has just turned 16 and 17. It’s the age where you can come back and volunteer – 90 per cent of my first group of campers have come back.
“I can remember where these kids were at before they came to camp. No one would have ever thought it was possible they could be role modelling for other kids.”
Ms Dupagne said there were real benefits to having a camp like hers outside of a city.
She had to Google Kulin before her first drive out, and was surprised to see it boasted a state-of-the-art recreational centre, a hostel that slept 50 people and the biggest waterslide in regional Western Australia.
The small-town feel also had its benefits.
“The kids feel safe here,” she said.
“It can be way out of their comfort zone – some of the kids have never been half an hour outside of Perth – so it’s giving them exposure to a rural community.”
Ms Dupagne was among 10 people to win a Westpac fellowship.
Westpac Scholars Trust CEO Susan Bannigan said each of the fellows announced were extraordinary individuals driving positive change.
“Now in its fourth year, we can see the positive impact the fellowship program is making, not only on the individual, but also their community, organisation and the people they’re helping,” she said.
❝ I want to see us become the best in the world because our kids deserve that.
— Tanya Dupagne