Summer programs (goals, types, and impacts)

Introduction Centers spread during summer in different countries of the world. These centers have multiple names and titles some are only educational and some are educational and recreational, and some are marketing, commercial (festivals), and recreational, and some of which are professional.

Summer festivals attract children from different ages because they are full of entertainment, play, and sports; and most children do not join Islamic centers, why is that?

The raging competition appears between cooperative associations in Kuwait through "Summar festival" where these societies offer different commodities for competitive and cheap prices along with setting prizes for these drawings; moreover this festival aims to defining good and commodities.

Of summer festivals is "different summer" festival in KSA; where it introduces entertaining shows for children such as: paradrop, theatre shows, and athletics in which summer clubs participate such as the cross country running, forbearance race, climbing sands, and motor race. Moreover, there is a gym where children can play billiards, play station, and Internet Cafe.

The program of "future callers" aims to accustom children to contribute in charitable actions through visiting one of charitable institutions. The most important activities of that program is printing Ayahs and Hadiths using computers and distributing booklets to people, in addition to promoting the notion of lawful earning to encourage children to work and training them for some professions such as printing researches or articles.

There is also the notion of "money box" to accustom children to expenditure. The notion of "Righteous children" to accustom children to help their mother in house works and the notion of "organized child" where a child learns how to organize his own tools, his bedroom, and others.

There are summer camps for families and the subscription fees are cheap where organizers give lectures on civil defense (extinguishing, municipal, and anti-smoking and drugs), displaying some goods and local industries (shoes, prayer beads, biscuits), as well as sport and cultural competitions.

Summer Program definition:

It is a group of different religious, educational, cultural, and social meaningful activities that are implemented during the summer vacation to invest the children's spare time, and meeting their needs and desires, and it includes the following programs:

Religious education: Instilling Islamic principles and ethics in the hearts of young people.

Educational activity: Through acquiring studying skills and what is going on in the classroom, as well as life skills that prepare young people to interact with oneself and with others, and learning to work.

Social activity: Trips, visits, competitions, community service, volunteer work, and health education and traffic.

Cultural activity: It includes theater work, library, radio, press, research, seminars, and courses.

Sports activity: It includes individual and collective sports.

Scout activity: It includes trips (tourism on land or desert).

Artistic activity: Such as programs of improving calligraphy, painting, decoration and works, and sculpture.

Professional activity: Such as electricity, carpentry, plumbing, repair work, and home maintenance.

Volunteering:

Associations and youth clubs have realized the danger of leisure time in the summer vacation and the negative effects resulting therefrom; therefore these associations moved to maintain their children, provide employment opportunities for them, protect them from loitering in the streets during the summer, and prevent them from committing crimes.

Associations stressed the importance of youth volunteering teamwork, especially during the summer period to rescue them from the clutches of corruption and loss. Given that governments alone cannot care and rescue youth, the role of civil society institutions contributes also in solving the problems of youth; therefore the goal of civil society has become the development and progress of society through volunteering teamwork. This work depends on some factors to succeed, including youth and their enthusiasm in the service of their communities, but despite the importance of teamwork, the approach of youth is still weak. Perhaps the concept of "volunteerism" and its importance is not mature in the minds of young people, besides that, individuals do not know much about volunteering work. It is true that volunteering is free of charge but it contains a system of privileges and incentives which volunteers enjoy. The importance of voluntary work for young people is that it strengthens their belonging to the community, and develops their abilities, identifies the facilities of the community, and gives them the opportunities to express their views on the issues of the society, occupy their free time, create new leaderships, and reduce juvenile crimes. A French study indicated that 80% of those who practiced voluntary work had left crime and returned to society normal.

There are several institutions and centers interested in summer programs for school students:

Youth Camps:

They are affiliated to the Public Authority for Youth and Sports, and under the supervision of Youth Organizations, and held the first experimental camp in 1969, and then the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor adopts the notion of camps; where their numbers have become over 40 camps: By a camp in the summer and a camp in the spring, and of the objectives of youth camps is investing the leisure time of young people, preparing a generation of young people responsible for the development of their homelands, and training them for exerting efforts, cooperation, and self-reliance; meeting of young people and exchanging experiences. Therefore, the camp youths were held at the level of GCC since 1984, and the first camp was held in Qatar in the same year, and the GCC entertained these camps alternately once every year and the duration of each camp is only 10 days. The leadership of the camp organizes meetings between youth from the GCC to discuss a general program for the camp that contains of a morning and evening terms during which different activities, visits, tours, seminars, and workshops are held.

The most important volunteer work carried out by the Kuwaiti youth during the camps that are held in Kuwait are: The reconstruction of public parks, dredging and reclamation, digging canals in farms, planting seedlings, cleaning mosques and beaches, lifting debris off roads, and others.

Programs of these camps are varied between sports, social, religious, recreational, and cultural programs, and these programs are implemented within a daily schedule, starting with the beginning of the morning until midnight, and a national motto is selected and the period of the camp is for several days.

Non-profit institutes and associations:

Training institutes, some cooperative societies, and others organize programs during summer for boys and girls. These programs include different sports, cultural, social, and religious activities, computer, languages, painting, calligraphy, self-confidence, and first aid. These organizations may spend a lot of money for attracting youth to these activities under different mottos such as "The summer of surprises and entertainment."

The concerned bodies with summer programs publish their ads in local newspapers, for instance but not limited:

An association announced the organization of training courses until the end of summer vacation for girls:

Break the barrier .. Speak and shine.

A course for promoting the skills of presentation and adds self-confidence when speaking in front of others, using effective communication skills in attraction. Four days (From ... To...) (75 dirhams).

The club of expression: Trains and encourages girls from 5 - 9 years for expression and language fluency, and promoting their skills to establish relationships between things (language skills - professional activities - Qur'an, stories, and songs - popular games - swimming - computer), Golden subscription (120 dirhams), silver subscription (80 dirhams) from 3/8 to 28/8.

Natural Linguistic Programming (NLP): Enables you to know your hidden powers, adds to your self-power, makes you master the mind language, and provides you with the communication skills with yourself and others. The course is divided into the first and the second levels (90 dirhams), And (50 dirhams) only for the first level.

Thinking club: Continues with great success in teaching life skills, and first aid courses, the art of dealing with oneself, making friends, gaining self-confidence, teaching the art of etiquette, the Glorious Qur'an, teaching swimming, and computer, Golden subscription (120 dirhams), And the silver is (75 dirhams).

My beautiful language club: For kindergarten, the first, and the second primary, training them using audio tapes, videos, computers, and toys for one month 3 days a week (50 dirhams).

Swimming and computer: Teaching swimming in collaboration with a health club, (3) days a week (30 dirhams), Computer courses, and price is according to the level.

Under the slogan of "the camp of study is funny" one of the training institutes organized a course entitled "self-reliance using the effective study" for students of schools for (4) weeks from 4 pm to 8 pm.

"The Arabic Language Club" affiliated to one of associations organized a course on promoting the Arabic language skills for the primary school by using the method of learning through playing for one month, two days per week.

One of the cooperative societies organized "summer courses" during summer vacation for school students and the rest of the public, including: Cooking sessions, teaching swimming, drawing computer imaging, how to get rid of anger, self-confidence, dealing with oneself, NLP, marital relations, and rehabilitation of the divorced. In addition to the courses of "My son is creative and smart, painting of silk, painting, calligraphy, domestic accidents and Prevention, and first aid.

"The youth center" in one of the non-profit associations is active in providing programs and a variety of activities. There are programs on the development of hobbies and creativity, the bearer of musk, and Qur'an sessions, swimming, scouting skills, Karate, cruises, diving, soccer, water sports, and bowling.

One of the non-profit associations proposed a summer course for high school students under the title of: "How to excel?" It includes the following points: Identifying ambitions before study, recipes for the eminent people, excellence skills, mind map, getting ready for exams, and the secrets of success.

The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs organized "As-Siraj Al Munir" meeting to receive boys and girls from 8 to 14 years old in the schools of the Ministry of Education: 6 schools for boys and 10 for girls to study jurisprudence, the Qur'an, Prophet's biography, life skills, educational sports for two days a week from 4 pm to 7 pm with the beginning of the school year 2005 - 2006.

Centers for summer courses:

These centers spread in all the Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim countries day after another. In the beginning, masjids were the home of these centers, as in the Arab and Muslim countries, especially in the seventies of the last century, and rarely you can find a masjid without religious and cultural programs for children and adults. With the increasing numbers of these centers, some non-profit associations have adopted the same objectives of these centers, especially teaching young children Shari`ah sciences and practising some sorts of physical sports. In the beginning, some educators and instructors volunteered to run these centers, but with the increasing number of summer courses, some religious youth started to run the activities of these centers and these activities. In the beginning of the seventies, these summer courses used to open their gates from the early morning but the case changed after the increase of broadcasting hours of satellite channels and people got used to stay awake for late hours and wake late. It has become difficult for children to wake up early and come to these centers, therefore these centers changed their hours to open after the `Asr Salah and suffer fiscal deficits where the subscription fees of students do not cover the cost, and stand unable to provide good education for their children. In the field study of (Sebti 2006) -who was the developer of these summer centers- some negatives and challenges that were facing the Islamic study centers were studied from the point view of the parents of students:

• The lack of seriousness and commitment among some of the organizers of the course.

• Redundancy in the information given to the children.

• Poor performance of some teachers.

• The absence of some teachers.

• Delay and lack of commitment by some teachers of the time of lessons.

• Poor distribution of students in the classroom; in terms of educational level, intelligence, and age.

• Some centers do not follow absentee students and dropouts.

• Inadequacy of the place of teaching.

• The short duration of the course (six weeks).

The developer received some negative remarks, such as in the curriculum of the Prophet's Biography where one of the teachers say: "Filling an amount of important events that require analysis and understanding in short paragraphs, and sometimes without chronological sequence, has a negative impact on children's ability to understand them."

He adds: "Some lessons are written as if they are addressing fully aware people who know all the details of biography, so they come vague and unclear to non-specialists, as well as frequent typos."

Some people propose to include the Arabic language curriculum in the course due to the general weakness which students suffer in reading and writing.

Of the negatives about the place of teaching, he adds: "My first impression about the place is very depressing, frustrating, and is not suitable for learning, entertainment, and education."