CHAT Sports Camps

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  Friday 21st February, 2020
  Categories: Outreach Stories

CHAT Sports Camps
“Kids who had never met were interacting around complex issues of faith and culture. You don’t see that a lot.”

Fun, friends, food, sport, faith, culture and community are the foundations of this new urban mission experience. CHAT – Cultural, Hearing, Asking and Telling - is best described as beach mission meets camp meets school program, run in a school. CHAT Sports Camps use the universal language of sport to create a forum where young people from diverse backgrounds come together, develop relationships, hear one another’s stories and learn skills to dialogue together respectfully.
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Kids who had never met were interacting around complex issues pretty quickly. You don’t see that a lot in public settings, especially in terms of talking about faith and culture.
Joel, CHAT Volunteer

From 21 -23 January, two summer CHAT Sports Camps ran successfully in two colleges. For our team, this was a huge exercise in trusting God. One week out, we had the team and the program, but there were only three registrations across the two schools. As the program commenced, the kids came! Each day, more teenagers joined in as those who attended returned with their friends. Over the three days, 41 young people participated across the two campuses. So many times we were asked, ‘When will this run again?’ - a good measure of the success of these inaugural events!

These 41 young people represented 16 different nationalities. Over the three days they played together, ate together and discussed life topics around identity and culture. They shared their stories, and heard and engaged with the stories of others. They developed a deeper understanding of each other’s backgrounds and perspective, and now have a connection they’ll take back to their school communities.

— Christina, CHAT Sports Director




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