Fire & Rescue, Police Camps Give Students Hands-on Experience

This summer, several teens in Manassas were given the opportunity to gain professional and hands-on experience in Fire & Rescue and Police work in camps run by the city.

These camps were free for students, with the help of the Manassas City Police Charitable Foundation, which paid for the cost of the camps, and helped students attend.

According to Patty Prince, city spokeswoman, offering the camps for these students was not only good for them individually, but for the community as well.

“We’re all one city, and we all benefit when our young people keep going through high school and earn their degrees,” Prince said.

See a collection of photos taken during the camp

The Police camp, hosted July 7- 18, was geared towards incoming freshmen at Osbourn High School in Manassas. During the two one-week camps, the students learned how to conduct a traffic stop, defense tactics, visited the SWAT team and saw demonstrations from the K-9 unit, according to a press release issued by Prince.

Working with incoming freshmen is particularly important, as having early access to job skills and career planning can help students in pursuing their education.

“It’s important because you’re working with rising [high school] freshman, so you’re showing them what you can do after they’re done with school. Just the varieties of careers they can get into if they finish their degree, as well as what they can do after high school. So you’re catching them as they get into school, and giving them that kind of incentive to study hard and work,” said Prince.

Similar to the Police camp, but with the added element job preparation and interviewing skills, the Fire & Rescue camp, offered for freshmen and rising sophomores, was held July 28 – August 1. Students going through the camp learned how to wear firefighter gear, basic skills, CPR, and even emergency simulations and demonstrations for the sophomore students.

Jhenny Michalek, a parent of one of the Fire & Rescue camp participants, was really pleased with the experience her daughter had at the camp.

“What I really loved about the camp, and what really impressed me with the kids was that they mostly didn’t know each other when they started the camp, and throughout the whole camp, with all of the things they were doing, I saw them all encouraging each other,” said Michalek.

In addition to the encouragement that Michalek saw during the camp, she was also happy with the students’ teamwork on difficult tasks. “It really impressed me how much the teamwork aspect of it was really focused on by the guys that ran the camp,” Michalek said.

For her daughter, the highlights were some of the more exciting activities, as well as the job training experience that she received. “I liked it a lot. The scariest thing for me was going up on that ladder. The business [development] part where we interviewed people and we were interviewed and we had to fill out an application [was helpful],” Michalek’s daughter commented.