As we look with anticipation to welcoming campers next summer it is clearer than ever that the safety and the health of campers must be the top priority.  To that end, we have been paying close attention to those camps that did run in 2020 to glean any useful information that we can learn from those with outbreaks such as possible things to avoid, and those without breakouts and their strategies that we can duplicate.

Part of this process will be an ongoing dialogue and partnership with camp families. One of the strategies that a number of successful 2020 programs adopted was a 2-week self-quarantine of all campers/participants before the start of camp. Colorado Outward Bound is an example of a program that is currently operating and implementing this strategy as one prong of its safety plan. In order for this to be effective, every single family must agree and help to keep their child quarantined for two weeks prior to camp. While we are hopeful that by this summer we will not need to require a self-quarantine we are keeping this in mind as an added precaution to make sure we provide the safest possible summer for our kids.

We wanted to share four articles that we have found helpful in one way or another. The first we include in part because of the good news it contains, as summarized in this paragraph from the article “What Schools Can Learn from the Many Summer Camps that Avoided COVID Infections” in The Dallas Morning News:  “But despite the somewhat unusual accommodations (dining in shifts, wearing masks, limiting interactions between cabins and cohorts), we saw more joy in our campers than a normal year. Simply being able to be kids, to play, interact with friends, and challenge themselves, was a powerful balm after a spring of shelter-in-place. One parent reported that she “got her happy child back.”” This article goes on to detail the importance of summer camp not only for the campers and families but also for informing our community and government of what steps are effective to help stem the spread of the virus in regards to our children and their activities. It is in part thanks to the brave camps who safely ran a program this past summer that informed schools on how best to operate this fall and now giving camps across the US an idea of how they can run a safe and fun summer program in 2021.

Another great article detailing how camps successfully ran during this COVID summer and their influence on schools and the 2021 summer camp season is “These summer camps stayed safe from COVID-19. What lessons can schools learn?” from The Today Show. 

The third article from The New York Times entitled: “How to Lower the Risk of Infection at Summer Camps” is an opinion piece that was written in the spring and offered some suggestions about how a camp might safely run. And while this piece was written in the spring and may have some out-dated information now, it still summarizes perfectly what needs to happen at camp to keep campers safe.

The final article, “Sleep Away Camps Offer COVID-Free Bubbles For Remote Learning,” is a story from NPR about a camp in New Hampshire that was able to run without incident in 2020 and continues to operate as a school-from-camp program where families are able to rent out cabins and work and study from camp safely. Re-iterating the point that the successful camps of 2020 were so because they created safe bubbles where there was limited to no contact with people or places outside of the camp property, allowing for a completely COVID free space and community. This has been proven to be a very successful procedure which we have kept in our minds as we move towards this summer. We are looking at less-traveled hiking spots and limiting our visits to Donnellys in order to ensure a safer camp bubble.

In terms of camper safety, we do have some advantages that make us feel cautiously optimistic about 2021. First, we have been proponents of outdoor education, of getting kids outdoors as much as possible for a long time. So, it is a natural fit for us to continue doing what we were already doing. As a few of the articles we listed above mention, the use of mainly outdoor activities is attributed to being a reason that there was less of a spread of the virus.
Second, we are blessed with a 65-acre campus in a very remote area, with an abundance of space and buildings we can use to help keep campers and staff safely distanced if need be. 
Third, we will intentionally be running with relatively low numbers this upcoming year. As camper numbers grow, so too do the challenges involved with keeping them safe, so we feel very fortunate to be a small camp on a large campus.

We are very excited for this summer and cannot wait to see all of our campers again!!