A national program has been growing in the Salt Lake Valley to combine character development with regular school studies.

Learning for Life, a subsidiary of the Boy Scouts of America, uses mentors who teach 30-minute lessons on character values to schoolchildren in grades K-6. The program, established in 1991, helps schoolchildren "regain a sense of ethics," said Linda Keyes, director of the program for the Great Salt Lake Council.

These mentors conduct lessons and activities on topics such as respecting others, resolving conflicts, coping with stress, and covers skills such as money management and consumer awareness. The program tailors its lesson plans to different groups of grade levels.

Learning for Life administers to schools where many of the students struggle with poverty and challenging life situations.

The program helps teach these children core values the children might not have had a chance to learn, Scott Brown, chairman of council's Learning for Life steering committee and an attorney in Salt Lake City, said. He said many children come into the valley with poor English skills and from places where the need to simply survive has superceded learning character values.

"We're trying to carry Learning for Life to the areas that are most deeply impacted first," Brown said. He added, however, that the program is expanding to schools in less disadvantaged areas.

As schoolchildren develop positive character traits, their studies improve, Brown said. "We've got to teach the whole child."

Keyes said a major benefit the program brings is "a recognition by children that they have power over choices they make."

This includes making the decision not to participate in certain things children see their peers or even their parents doing and finding positive, alternative ways to "act out," Keyes said.

While mentors in the program are not counselors, Keyes said the students learn that they can talk to someone about their problems and get help.

Learning for Life has been holding day camps this month for schools in Mill Creek Canyon on land owned by the Boy Scouts of America.

Students at the camps move from different stations participating in activities that reinforce and put into practice what these children learn during school, Keyes said. She added that some of these children are seldom able to get out of the urban life of the valley.

This month, the camps are hosting nearly 12,500 students.

Several of these camps are planned and operated by high school students, including a camp for fourth-graders at Westvale Elementary organized by the student body officers of Hillcrest High School.

"It was just an awesome experience for the kids — more than they thought they were going to get," Katherine Riding, principal of Westvale Elementary, who spent some time at the camp, said.

The students performed service activities, one in which they packaged clothes and articles for Iraqi children. Riding said the high school students could reach the fourth-graders effectively than adults could. She said almost all of the fourth-grade class, on- and off-track for the year-round school, went to the camp.

Learning for Life will be holding camps May 25 and May 29-30. The program will hold camps again in the fall, probably mid-September or early October, Keyes said.

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E-mail: bcaballero@desnews.com