Empowerment Via Language
I had a prospective parent contact me earlier today, asking about the potential comfort level for her 12 year old daughter. They live in Costa Rica and her daughter speaks only Spanish with rudimentary English abilities. The daughter is excited to get fully immersed in a supportive, English-only environment to maximize her English-speaking.
Because our summer camp program has a multicultural, empowerment focus, I felt comfortable relating to the mom that we have had campers of a variety of initial English-language comfort. A cogent example was when we had two cousins who each spoke Spanish as a first language. The older cousin was initially less confident with her English than was the younger one, yet both thrived during their camp experience.
As with all of our campers, with our international campers, we try to maximize their individual identity while having them appreciate others for what they bring to camp; therefore, not being super proficient in English is not necessarily a significant barrier. We usually have at least one bilingual staff member, which can be a benefit if/when necessary for the camper to speak comfortably in their first language; otherwise, at camp whenever campers are in groups of three or more, the practice is to speak in English only. Everyone therefore becomes more empowered with the language and comfortable that everyone is communicating the same way.