One way through which we can help our children to acquire social skills is by allowing them to participate in holiday youth camps that are always conducted by certain organisations with youth related programmes. The times have changed whereby keeping the young people idle during holidays can prompt them to engage themselves in certain undesirable activities that ruin their lives.

In the current situation, many parents are always busy and they spend long hours at their workplaces. They leave home very early in the morning and go back home late in evening. The holiday makers stay at home with the maids and some maids are not responsible enough to provide proper guidance to the children. By the time the parent realizes that something wrong has been going on with the child, it may be too late to reverse it. That is why young people need to have social skills so that they can manage their lives responsibly even when their parents are not at home.

Usually, the camps take about three weeks during the third term’s holiday and students from various schools come together and participate in several activities that help them to develop interpersonal skills, leadership skills, goal setting skills, organizational skills, communication skills, decision making and building self-esteem. These are skills that our young people should develop in order for them to become responsible citizens who attach a lot of value to themselves and are mindful of the things that are detrimental to their lives.

Gone are the days when uncles and aunties would help parents to inculcate certain values in the young people during holidays. Nowadays most adults are ever busy. Uncles and aunties are visited on rare occasions and for a short time. The role that used to be played by such people can be adequately handled by the facilitators in the youth camps because the organisers usually identify resourceful adults and youth leaders to inspire, mentor and empower the participants with social skills. We cannot rely entirely on the maids to inculcate the social values in our children.

In most cases, the maids lack authority over the children given the fact that the children consider them as people of a low social status. This explains the reason why we should always send some of our children to the holiday youth camps. Those who participate can spread the useful message to their siblings who might have remained at home and at the end of it all, everyone gets transformed.

In some cases, students in higher institutions of learning and universities are used as facilitators in the youth camps and they share a lot of information with the high school holiday makers in terms of how to set and achieve goals, how to deal with life challenges and how to guard against certain temptations. The information that the adolescents get from fellow youth is more appealing to them than what the adults tell them.

There is always a lot of meaningful fun that the young people enjoy during holiday camps. Rather than wasting a lot of valuable time on face book and WhatsApp and indulging in love relationships, the young people play games,tell stories, listen to music and enjoy the fun from the other camp-related activities. By the time the programme ends, the participants are fully equipped with skills that promote behavioral change and they are capable of influencing their peers to change as well. It is very rare for them to go back to their previous undesirable ways.

As we continue to modernize our communities, there is need for us to devise ways of protecting our children from the dangers that come with modernization. We should always expose them to activities that keep them busy in a meaningful way during the holidays so as to tame them.