Funding for all - Letters to the Editor - Letter to the Editor

Camping Magazine, Sept-Oct, 2002

I believe strongly that every child should have the opportunity to attend a quality residential camp. We are far from that goal, and I believe, losing ground. Our more affluent families certainly have the opportunity to have their children attend a wide variety of quality private-independent camps. Fortunately, a fairly good number of children from very poor families have a chance to attend camp through agencies such as The Salvation Army and Boys Clubs [Boys and Girls Clubs of America] or as a result of community campership funds. Children with serious diseases are pretty well provided for by camps serving special populations, but my concern is for the child from a middle-class family struggling to make ends meet. I am convinced that each year a smaller percentage of these children go away to camp than the year before.

As a real estate agent specializing in the sale of camps, I have seen dozens of youth agency camps sold off, while I have only seen one new youth agency camp created in the seventeen years I have been in the business. Granted that some of the remaining youth agency camps have grown larger, it seems to me that the ratio of children being served to the total population of children in the camp age is gradually going down.

Most of the blame for this situation can be laid to lack of money... poor salaries, which result in high turnover of key staff, deferred maintenance, etc.

... ACA needs to be searching out major funding for nonprofit camps. Whether this comes from the Federal or state governments or from foundations and private philanthropy, it must be found.... There is money out there if we can sell the right people on the urgency of the need.

If, and when, ACA takes up this challenge, we will become more of a service organization and less of a "trade organization."

ROBERT F. HANSON

WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA