Thank you to everyone who attended our 9th annual Camp Summit last month! Each year, we bring together youth program providers from all over the St. Louis region to celebrate the people and organizations who run out-of-school programs, reflect on the past year, and foster new collaborations through a community of support.
An essential part of the Camp Summit is also sharing new learning and resources for camp providers to take back to their programs. Four organizations led breakout sessions that dove into ways to support campers with big emotions and mental health challenges, how to incorporate hands-on STEM projects into summer learning, and ways to help youth find their own process of artistic creation without limits.
We started the morning with reflections from Blueprint4 founder Maxine Clark and Chief of Staff Allie Cicotte. Maxine shared how the inspiration for Blueprint4 came about 11 years ago when she realized there were children who didn’t have access to summer camps or learning opportunities. Blueprint4 was created to make after-school, summer and college prep programs more accessible for kids and teens across St. Louis. The free searchable database, community partnerships, camp fairs and summer camp scholarships were all developed to help better meet this community need.
After an energizing get-to-know you rock, paper, scissors tournament, everyone broke out into their morning sessions. If you weren’t able to make it to the summit, we’ve included links to the session presentations here.
The day wrapped up with a fun raffle, ending with giving away a $1,000 scholarship to help more kids be able to go to camp next year!
And finally thank you to our event sponsor, the St. Louis Mental Health Board, for their support in putting on this event for the 9th year! We are grateful to everyone who came out and participated in this year’s camp summit and we hope it was a fulfilling, inspiring day!