Nonprofit Summer Camps Offer Kids Much More Than S’mores

Most summer camps share a common goal: to bring together new faces, offer new activities, and provide a home-away-from-home experience that helps kids build confidence.

But the array of options nonprofit groups offer to children can be staggering.

The American Camp Association, in Martinsville, Ind., estimates that four out of five of the nation’s 12,000 summer camps are run by nonprofit groups. A growing number of those camps are geared toward children who are poor or have special needs.

“Many people think of camp as a place to go and they think of it as recreation, but a great deal of the work taking place in a camp is really around youth development,” says Peg Smith, chief executive officer of the association. “We have research that it really does have an impact on a child’s ability to make friends, to problem solve, have a better understanding of themselves in relationship to the world.”

Among the innovative camp offerings this summer:

• The Naming Project’s camp near Brainerd, Minn., which brings gay, lesbian, and bisexual teenagers together for swimming, hiking, and spiritual reflection. The goal is to provide a way for campers to explore issues of Christianity and sexual identity.

• Camp to Belong, which gives siblings who live in different foster-care homes the chance to reconnect.

• Camp Airways, a program for children with asthma that provides them an opportunity to enjoy summertime physical activities they might otherwise have to avoid. Nurses and respiratory specialists serve as camp counselors.

Jessie Stone, a doctor and champion kayaker, started a free program in 2001 for kids in New York City whose families have a hard time affording travel and extracurricular activities. The campers spend time at a pool learning to paddle a kayak, then move on to the Hudson River, the beach on Long Island, white water in Connecticut, and finally to the Rogue River, in Oregon.

Dr. Stone says the program encourages the teenagers “to be open to new experiences in their lives, step out of their comfort zone.” After the youths learn to kayak, she adds, “there are a lot more things they’ll be willing to try.”

Photographs are available at http://philanthropy.com/extras.