Life skills and fun were the main ingredients for a five-day summer retreat, jam-packed with activities for children from the OASI Kids Club. The Gozo-based OASI Foundation is well known for its preventive education, crisis intervention, treatment of and rehabilitation from abuse of illegal and other road altering substances.
The 2008 Summer OASI Learning Experience (SOLE) was organised at St Joseph Hostel in Ghajnsielem, Gozo, as one of the many activities planned for 2008 by the organisation’s Primary Prevention Team. Thanks to the financial assistance of the HSBC Cares for Children Fund, SOLE was able to give its young participants aged between 10 and 14 the opportunity to have a live-in experience and learn basic social skills together with other children.
The experience was built around practical sessions on how to deal with challenging life situations and entertaining events to boost children’s self-esteem in an edutainment form. Besides in-house activities and crafts sessions, different excursions of personal preference to the participants was also organised to Xlendi Bay in Gozo, Ghadira Beach in Malta and Comino’s Blue Lagoon.
“The OASI Kids Club embraces a policy of inclusion to ensure that children from various social backgrounds come together and integrate with others while acquiring the right social skills and values they all need in order to move on in life in a happily balanced way,” said OASI’s Director General Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Cordina in his closing speech to the children themselves and their parents. “Therefore we are grateful to HSBC Cares For Children Fund for making it once again possible for OASI to provide to the children participating a golden opportunity to learn how to stand firm in front of peer-pressure and consequently avoid becoming victims of harmful lifestyles such as substance abuse at a later stage.”