Last year, we celebrated 10 years of Blueprint4 and reflected on what a decade has done for the state of summer camps in St. Louis. We’ve helped to create greater access to out-of-school programs to bolster the success of young people and strengthen the health of our St. Louis community. We’ve also identified areas that still need critical support to help STL youth make their dreams reality.
Our Highest Ever Total
In 2024, we listed 9,699 summer opportunities on our site! That’s the highest ever total—making it clear more and more camps are being offered to STL families. There were camps offered in a diverse array of subjects, with Arts, Sports, Before/After Care and STEM being the most prevalent.
Greater Access to Summer Camp
Our of our platform’s unique benefits is our ability to take a bird’s eye view on the landscape of youth programming in our community. While there have been improvements in summer program availability in the City of St. Louis and North County, work remains to be done. We continue to share camp location information, assess geographic gaps, and support innovative partnerships to serve high-need areas so that one day, all families will have high quality out-of-school programs, no matter what their zip code is.
Searching for Camps
St. Louis-area families conducted 114,348 total searches on the Blueprint4 platform in 2024! We analyze this search data to determine what families are looking for when they search for camps. This helps us understand how the search tool function for our community, and how we can improve it to reach more families that will benefit from access to camps.
This data is also freely shared with our network of local program providers so they can understand what criteria matters most to parents. For instance, this year we saw that 82% of searches included a distance parameter, showing us that a camp’s proximity is a huge factor in how parents choose a camp. 39% of searches included an age parameter, and 34% of searches include a subject matter, telling us that the specifics matter! Families are looking for camps that match their child’s interests and age-appropriate abilities.
If you’d like to read the 2024 report in its entirety, you can view it here. The 2025 report will be available at the end of this year.