Impact: Campers
Impact: Campers
Back in October, the Wanakee Board of Directors spent a weekend visioning and problem solving, including a few hours of discussion of Wanakee’s impact on different portions of our community. In the months ahead, I’d like to share a bit about those conversations, and with your help, take the conversation further.
We’ll start with the most important piece of our community: What impact does Wanakee have on campers?
Let’s start with the obvious: a Wanakee experience is simply fun! Our songs are often silly, our games are inclusive and non-traditional (Giants, Wizards, and Gnomes? Alaskan Baseball?), and campers feel empowered to let their guard down, discover who they are, and explore who they want to be. It’s safe to be yourself at camp.
Another obvious impact? At Wanakee, children and youth experience and engage the natural world by living, playing, and laughing on their way to Lemon Squeeze, along our half mile of lakefront, atop our stately white pines after ascending the Giant’s Ladder, and in the field under the Milky Way.
In his book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv argues that “Time in nature is not leisure time; it’s an essential investment in our children’s health.” Wanakee proudly maintains a “no technology” policy for campers – embracing one side of a very present paradox: today’s youth love the constant and instant connection to their peers provided by technology, while also resenting its pressure and inability to foster much more than surface-level relationships. Real, deep, connection happens face to face, as evidenced by the depth of camp friendships formed in just one week that often last a lifetime. In “The Nature Principle,” Louv rhetorically asks “What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?” Wanakee provides the space to find out, even if only for a week.
“What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?”
Wanakee is also a place where campers experience personal growth. As touched on above, campers are able to explore how they want to interact with peers and adults. Counselors, volunteers, and other staff model collegial, loving relationships, facilitate relationship building, and create an environment of radical acceptance. This spirit empowers campers to express their individuality and develop emotionally.
In this emotionally safe environment, campers are able to practice autonomy, safely try out decision making skills, and gain responsibility and empathy. They help make camp run (by being “hoppers” in the dining hall, for example) and expand their social and personal comfort zones. It’s hard to meet a bunch of new people and quickly forge a bond with them! But this happens every week at Wanakee.
This note should read as optimistic, because camp makes me optimistic. However, sometimes things go wrong at camp. It can rain! Sometimes, campers can’t make it to the climbing wall on their first, second, or third try. The handholds spin! In those moments, campers may well experience negative emotions, and then they’ll work through them with help from peers and mentors. They may grow in their understanding of and ability to navigate failure. So many things happen at camp that are outside the experience of school or home or church. Campers (and people!) grow most quickly in moments of safe discomfort.
Central to Wanakee’s impact is our connection to the Christian faith and the Methodist Church, and the opportunity to support young people as they wrestle with their own beliefs, spiritual practices, and morality. Campers come to Wanakee from everywhere on the faith spectrum, including households steeped in the life of a local congregation, families with little or no exposure to organized religion, and from backgrounds completely outside Methodism, Protestantism, and/or Christianity.
How do we approach spiritual growth? Time in the outdoors is naturally conducive to reflection. There is a spiritual resonance in a beautiful setting like ours, and if you don’t believe me, let’s go watch the sunset at Inspiration Point together.
Camper James, experiencing Wanakee community, circa 2001
While sunsets and shooting stars open the door to spiritual formation in a way that no program can, we also take an active hand in modeling and instilling the Christian values that are part of Wanakee’s DNA. Our activities designed to foster spiritual growth may be a young person’s first exposure to Christian values of love, acceptance, and service (and more!), but we never require participation in a religious activity or expect campers to profess a specific belief. We aim to open the door to faith, but never to push anyone through it; to provide a safe space to explore and question, but never to pass judgment. These experiences are foundational, and provide a deep well to draw from later in life. They also create ties into local churches, who are available for support and connection 365 days a year.
A thread through all of the above, and the last piece of our impact that I’ll point out here, is that everything at Wanakee happens in a uniquely loving community, steeped in tradition and story, and connected to older generations. Our programming starts with toddlers and runs through every age bracket. Campers get to live and experience our rich history through a robust network of volunteers, some of whom have literally been involved at Wanakee for five decades.
Beyond our rich traditions, and speaking from personal experience as a camper, Wanakee is uniquely successful at realizing the best parts of authentic Christian Community, which may be why many adults still point to Wanakee as their church. People feel valued here. People feel loved here. People treat each other with kindness here. There’s a common saying – “people won’t remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.” That’s what I remember from my camper days – loving counselors, deep belly laughs, and rich friendships.
To sum up, Wanakee’s impact on campers includes:
FUN
Experiences in nature
Personal Growth
Spiritual Growth
Loving Community, Rich Tradition
What would you add? Anything you disagree with? And now that you’ve taken the time to reflect on all of the above with me, don’t you want the people in your life to experience this place in 2017?
91 campers have already signed up, and we can’t wait to see them. We hope you or someone you love will be number 92.
Grace and Peace,
James Tresner, Executive Director