Each June, we share our annual DEI update. It’s a chance for all of us to look back on the last year and the steps we’ve taken to increase diversity among our community of campers and volunteers, ensure we are creating a more equitable culture, and foster a stronger sense of inclusion and belonging.
Let’s start with camp.
One of our main goals this past year has been to expand our reach to more kids in under-resourced communities. We strived to increase equity and accessibility for Black and Brown campers by increasing our recruitment efforts for campers and volunteers of color at our various camp programs. Additionally, we’ll open a new camp program in Maryland this August that allows us to serve communities that are deeply in need of more grief support.
We’ve been working to share our programs and build relationships with organizational partners in local Maryland communities, and by doing so, we’ve reached more families in these areas. Our in-person “Playing through Grief” events in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. reached approximately 75 kids and caregivers and gave us the opportunity to partner with organizations such as Baltimore City Public Schools, the DC Dream Center, Metropolitan Police Department, and the T.I.M.E. Organization.
“Playing through Grief” events provide grieving kids an opportunity to learn how to navigate their feelings, build coping skills, and come together to play with other grieving children. On top of that, it gives them the chance to learn about our camps.
Thanks to these efforts, our Maryland camp is fully enrolled! We’ll be welcoming 77 campers (74% of whom are campers of color) and 61 staff and volunteers (49% of whom are volunteers of color). We’re beyond excited to cheer and give high-fives all around as these full buses pull up to camp!
Additionally this summer, we’re opening a camp program in Maui for grieving kids who live on the island and have limited access to grief support. We have been learning and listening to how we can best incorporate Hawaiian culture and traditions into our clinical model.
Across the country, our camps will include 24% staff and volunteers of color (174); and 38% campers of color (436 campers), falling slightly short of our ambitious goals for this summer, and reinvigorating our efforts for next year to keep moving the needle.
We expanded our DEI trainings.
This past year, we enhanced our camp training to meet the needs of our staff and our community by building upon DEI training from last year. This includes a two-part mandatory training called “Conversation Forward,” in which we teach volunteers how to understand and handle implicit bias (a negative attitude, of which one is not consciously aware) and microaggressions that might occur at camp.
We are also providing a training called “Understanding the Impact of Trauma” provided by the Wendt Center in D.C. to inform and raise awareness of the trauma that many of our campers experience due to deaths and other adverse conditions in their families and communities.
We ensure a diverse Youth Advisory Board.
Our Youth Advisory Board is made up of pre-teen and teen campers of various races and ethnic backgrounds. Each month, they share with us and our community insights on camp, ideas on new program initiatives, and their personal reflections on grieving. This allows us to hear the wide variety of voices of the young people we serve and continue learning how best to support and empower them.
Moving forward, we will continue to make diversity a high priority. We will do this by asking questions and listening to the community we serve, as well as to experts in the DEI space. We will seek new ways to build relationships with families in under-resourced communities, and we’ll stay focused on recruiting kids, volunteers, and staff of color across all of our programs.
