Summer camp staff work with children every day, often very young ones, and often in settings with real risks, such as swimming pools and playgrounds, yet nothing requires them to have any first aid training. In an emergency, the first minutes are the ones that matter most, and staff who have never been trained rarely know how to act in that time, a gap felt even more sharply in inland areas that are further from emergency services.
The obstacle is largely economic: first aid courses cost money that small summer camps, working with limited budgets, cannot always find for their whole staff, and the skills they do build are often lost the following year as staff change. Just as importantly, many camps do not yet see first aid as a priority, and that awareness needs to be built now, before an emergency forces the point.
The project
Salv(at)Estate 2.0 offers free, structured first aid training to animators and educators at summer camps, turning a course that camps previously had to pay for into something every centre can access regardless of budget. Alongside the training, each participating camp is supported in running its own crowdfunding campaign to buy a defibrillator (DAE), a concrete resource for the whole community.
The project trains the people already on site with children every day, since they are almost always the ones who can act fastest in the critical first minutes of an emergency. It aims to build lasting first aid skills among young animators and educators, who become a point of safety for their summer community, while also strengthening their own employability and sense of active citizenship, with particular attention to inland areas.
Who the project is for
The project's direct beneficiaries are around 300 animators and educators, an average of 15 per camp, trained across roughly 20 to 25 summer camps.
Its impact reaches further: the families and children hosted at these camps, local communities that gain an additional defibrillator wherever a crowdfunding campaign succeeds, and the wider area, in terms of a stronger everyday culture of first aid.
Project name: Salv(at)Estate 2.0
Proposing organisation: Salvagente Italia
Area of intervention: Inclusion & Social Development
Country: Italy