Venture Camp / Wagniscamp

In July 2023, two combined summer and adventure camps took place at the Coburg in Münster, just like the previous year. Organized by the German Alpine Club (DAV) in conjunction with the Otto Creutzfeldt Center (OCC), and sponsored by the City of Münster and the DJK Sports Foundation, the camp offered a great time for the children and scientific insights into how children overcome fears and find the self-confidence to take risks.

This year marked the introduction of an integrative camp model, with a total of 60 children participating—30 in each of the two weeks. Each week, 10 children from two wards of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University Clinics in Münster joined the camp. The children engaged in activities such as climbing on a climbing or bouldering wall, being lifted by a truck to a height of about 10 meters, and exploring virtual realities using VR. They faced various challenges, like confronting their fear of spiders, thunderstorms, dark places, or stepping onto a free-standing observation plank on a skyscraper. The camp aimed to ensure fun and collective play while enhancing the children's sense of self-efficacy by overcoming these challenges.

The children were thrilled with the integrative camp, and it was incredibly rewarding to observe how many more challenges they were willing to take on compared to what they initially thought possible. Researchers from the OCC will analyze data from physiological measurements and questionnaires collected during the camp to investigate how successfully overcoming fears influences the children's approach to new challenges.