2021, Here We Come!

December 14, 2020 (updated, January 20, 2021)

2020 was a year of change, perseverance and flexibility. It seemed as though each time we developed a solid plan, COVID threw another curveball, causing even more changes until we finally had to make the heart wrenching decision to cancel all remaining camp sessions. We are immensely thankful to our families and volunteers for their patience and grace as we navigated the uncertain territory of the past year.

This past fall, Aimee had the opportunity to attend a virtual conference and collaborate with other camp professionals across the country while gathering data and information from camps that successfully ran during the 2020 season. She, along with the programming staff have spent countless hours familiarizing themselves with the COVID-19 Field Guide published by the American Camp Association (ACA) and collaborating with our Lead Nurse, Jo Ann Blevins to guide us in developing our COVID Prevention Plan.

Using this information as a guide, we made a few modifications and are super, SUPER excited to share that we are moving forward with plans to hold four overnight camps!

Our detailed plan for operations in 2021 is as follows:

• SUMMER CAMPS: We believe we can provide programming with safety measures that will allow us to gather this summer. We plan to hold the four day overnight summer sessions as scheduled (June 16-19 and July 21-24). However, out of an abundance of caution (and based upon feedback from the survey we sent out in October), we have opted to reduce the number of individuals residing in the cabins. Because of this, we will need to decrease the number of slots available by nearly half.
• OVERNIGHTS (Two Day, One Night Camps): With rising COVID case numbers and the upcoming flu season, we do not feel that we will be able to responsibly and safely gather as early as March. Thus, we have opted to postpone the March session until later in the year and have rescheduled for September 4-5, 2021. The October session will be held as normal with the same number of campers and peer model campers on October 16-17, 2021.

Each year, we typically release the online application on January 2nd. However, this year, we are waiting until February 14th. Please check your email for the link to the required forms. Then, spend your Valentine’s Day dreaming of full-of-love days at camp. Those that applied in 2020 and were unable to attend will be given first dibs but a new online form must be submitted (most of the application will auto-fill last year’s submitted information).

This is slightly different than what we were hoping for when we announced the cancellation of our 2020 camps. Although we are grateful for a plan that gets several campers back to camp, the limited slots puts us in a bit of a conundrum. We were hoping that those that applied in 2020 would be automatically offered a slot in 2021 for a summer camp session. However, with the lingering pandemic and the decreased slots, we disappointingly cannot promise all will be able to attend in the summer. We know this feels like yet another punch in the gut when so many so desperately need camp but we sincerely hope that you’ll understand and we hope that if a summer slot is unavailable, that you’ll consider the Overnight camps in September and/or October. We’re not sure how many applications will roll in and whether a lottery will need to occur. We’ll know more and update you on March 1st.

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our Program Coordinator at agorrow@campencourage.org or 816.830.7171.