Community Nashville Building Bridges

At Oasis Center, a lot of what we do is Building Bridges.

So it makes sense that in 2010 we launched a unique partnership with Community Nashville to bring its award winning anti-bias programs, “Building Bridges”, under the umbrella of our Youth Engagement and Action Department. The overall goal of the Building Bridges programs is to educate young people for effective leadership in a diverse society.

Oasis Center currently offers three core Building Bridges programs:

Camp Anytown: A weeklong human relations and leadership program for high school students in the Nashville area. AnyTown participants have the opportunity to live with and get to know people from many different racial, ethnic, religious, cultural and socioeconomic groups. AnyTown helps students explore their own identities and biases. At Anytown, youth create a model community based on respect, understanding and peace. From this our young citizens develop skills that they can use to positively impact their communities.

Camp UniTown: A student led, three-day, residential, leadership and skills development retreat, held for students from a single school. Unitown offers students an intense leadership experience. The goal is to build positive relationships designed to cross cultural barriers that divide their school. At school these barriers can lead to anger, racially-related incidents of violence, and poor learning environments.

Camp MiniTown: A three-day residental leadership and skillls development retreat for students from both public and private schools. The program helps students learn how to interrupt prejudice and be a catalyst for inclusive behavior.