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The value of school camps at Ukutula
Our high-tech lifestyle gives kids today opportunities never dreamed of before. But many kids miss out on some of the most important ingredients in becoming healthy adults: connection to nature; exercise and play; meaningful friendships and positive adult role models.
Time spent at Ukutula can restore balance to your children’s over-scheduled days, teach life-long skills and allow friendships to flourish. It can help build a foundation for a successful and happy life.
Here are some of the most tangible benefits kids get from school camps at Ukutula.
Community & Friendship
Facebook friends are nice but they’re no substitute for real friends and mentors. At Ukutula Camps, kids make lifetime friends grounded in the experience of living together and caring for each other in many ways. They learn social rules, acceptable behaviour and leadership. And the positive role models kids find in their adult counsellors can have a lasting impact on their lives.
Connecting with Nature
Kids are the future stewards of our planet—yet they have fewer and fewer opportunities to be outdoors. As Richard Louv makes clear in his bestseller, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, nature must be experienced to be fully appreciated. Living in a natural setting is a defining experience.
Exercise
Whatever a child’s shape, size or skill level, Ukutula Camps offer a range of activities that foster enjoyment of physical activity and counteract the effects of too much sitting and eating in our society today. It’s a lot easier to get motivated to be active when exciting, new activities available in Ukutula’s beautiful outdoors are right at your doorstep…especially if all your best friends are doing so, too!
Activities & Play
Ukutula Camps offer wonderful structured activities to meet a child’s individual interests, with ample time for kids to just be kids—to engage spontaneously in games, free play, discussions and plain old playing with each other. These occasions help children deepen their friendships and add to their social development.
Developing Initiative, Confidence & Leadership Skills
School camps and specifically those held at Ukutula are a miniature version of the larger world. They are highly participatory communities where children can safely gain confidence and stretch their evolving capacities for leadership and initiative. Often for the first time, kids experience caring adults outside their family and meet peers from outside their circle of friends.
Winter does wonders for a lion’s hairdo
Research shows, for the first time, a link between a lion’s mane and climate. Up to one-half of mane length and density can be attributed to temperature rather than nutrition, social factors, or genes. A full mane attracts females and intimidates rivals, but comes with a cost.
The biggest cost is that it retains heat. In response, zoo lions in hot climates adapt with smaller, thinner manes. Study includes 19 lions in zoos across US.
If you were a male lion and could read the latest scientific research, you would want to move to a warmer climate, where your mane would be more impressive. That is, until it started getting smaller, to fit you to your new warmer climate!
It’s long been known that lions with long, full manes get the girls. Now, an innovative study based on zoo animals all across America shows for the first time that cold temperatures help the king of the beast grow his mane long and thick — and more appealing to potential mates.
In fact, up to one-half of the length and density of a zoo lion’s mane can be attributed to temperature, rather than nutrition, social factors, individual history, or genes, according to a study that will be the cover story of the April issue of the Journal of Mammalogy. That journal will be published on April 13, 2006.
Dense manes retard heat loss as would a scarf or fur hat. Zoo lions in hot climates adapt with smaller, thinner manes. Those in northern zoos never overheat so no reduction in their mane is necessary. Those in southern zoos occasionally overheat, so a differential hair growth rate keeps their manes relatively thinner.
These differences in mane conditions are not the result of natural selection. Rather, they are a sign of a flexible trait that can vary to match local conditions.
Like a buck’s antlers or a peacock’s tail feathers, the lion’s mane primarily serves to attract females and intimidate male competitors. But it comes with a cost: a full mane takes energy to grow and maintain; gives away location to prey; makes manoeuvring through bramble difficult; harbours parasites, and, as we have said, retains heat.
Overheating explains why lions in colder climates have longer, thicker manes: the heat-retention cost of a full mane is less for lions in cold weather conditions than it is for lions in hot weather conditions.
“While a big mane impresses everybody, even a small mane can be imposing in hot dry climates, where the costs of overheating are great and most male lions have little or no mane. This is the case in Tsavo, Kenya, where most lions are maneless,” said Bruce D. Patterson, PhD, the MacArthur curator of mammals at The Field Museum and lead author of the research.
He and his colleagues began studying manes due to their research on the infamous maneless Tsavo lions. Dr. Patterson is the author of The Lions of Tsavo (McGraw Hill, 2004), which tells the story of the man-eaters. At the end of the 19h century, two Tsavo lions set upon railway crews and ate as many as 135 people (by some accounts) before they were finally hunted down and killed.
Those two lions have been on display at The Field Museum since 1925, and are the subject of a major motion picture starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer called “The Ghost and the Darkness” (Paramount, 1996). While their man-eating habits have garnered most of the headlines, the maneless condition of these adult male lions is even more curious.
Full article: http://bit.ly/28ZB3gs
Why volunteering can change you
It’s a pretty common mistake to think of volunteering as just something nice that people can do. Sure, it may make them feel great about helping, but what impact does it really have?
The following are some of the valuable benefits of animal volunteer work:
Volunteering increases self-confidence
Volunteering can provide a healthy boost to your self-confidence, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. You are doing good for others and the community, which provides a natural sense of accomplishment. Your role as a volunteer can also give you a sense of pride and identity. And the better you feel about yourself, the more likely you are to have a positive view of your life and future goals.
Volunteering provides a sense of purpose
Whatever your age or life situation, volunteering can help take your mind off your own worries, keep you mentally stimulated, and add more zest to your life.
Volunteering helps you stay physically healthy
The physical activity involved in certain forms of volunteering—such as environmental projects in parks, nature reserves, or beaches—can be good for your health at any age, but it’s especially beneficial in older adults. Studies have found that those who volunteer have a lower mortality rate than those who do not, even when considering factors like the health of the participants. Volunteering has also been shown to lessen symptoms of chronic pain or heart disease.
Source: http://bit.ly/1QN4f8O
Sign up here to take part in Ukutula’s volunteer programme.
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