Florida Lake hosts SCARC for six-day winter boot camp
They have participated in local events, as well as national, and international races thanks to various sponsorships from companies willing to assist and support youth in the community.
Soweto Canoe and Recreation Club (SCARC) hosted a six-day FirstRand Youth Development Life Skills Winter Camp which took place at Florida Lake in July.
SCARC, based at Power Park, is very active and the youth of the area have enjoyed numerous opportunities to train and race on various dams/ rivers throughout South Africa.
The club does not have its own clubhouse and every winter and summer they arrange to use the Florida Lake Canoe Club based at Florida Lake for their training winter boot camp. This year’s boot camp took place during the snowfall and water outage in the area.
With the decrease in temperature over the week, the camp was a tremendous success according to Jennie Dallas, media liaison of the Gauteng Canoe Union. She said the cold week at the dam, which saw 55 children participating in swimming and paddling activities, was not ideal for camping and training conditions, however, there were some days where the weather was ‘near perfect’.
These favourable conditions also put everyone in a great mood and empowered paddlers to form camaraderie throughout training sessions and conduct team-building games, organise park runs, mental challenges and projects.
The boot camp also provided an opportunity for them to be exposed to a variety of useful and educational life skills from drumming to singing and dancing as well as canoeing. They are also exposed to important sessions including First Aid Training by the City of Johannesburg’s Emergency Medical Service, motivational speakers who have survived difficult upbringings and became successful as well as physical education classes which included Pilates.
“The highlight was July 15, with group presentations of their projects where the topic was ‘If you were president for a day, what action would you take?’ and some amazing and interesting insights came out of this young group – who were happy to have survived the snow and cold week with limited water in Florida,” Dallas said.
Hot 102.7 FM donated 50 warm blankets and toiletries with warm socks to be used at the camp throughout the cold week.
A huge amount of funds was invested to make the camp successful and SCARC management said they would like to thank all stakeholders for making this possible.
