It’s an exciting time at Shekinah!
We are busy getting ready for summer camp! Well, by the time you're reading this, summer camp is probably already underway.
We have just come through a successful School Group programming season. We were fortunate to have a full schedule and were able to give many students a chance to get out of the city and get into nature.
We are busy training new counselors, sprucing up facilities, and ordering food – a lot of food! – for hungry campers. It’s exciting and a bit overwhelming at the same time.
We are grateful for the number of campers who have signed up, so far. Response was so good that we added a couple of counselors and opened up more spots for camp. This is a great “problem” to have.
Summer camp – and serving young people and families – is at the heart of Shekinah’s reason for being. The chance to show young people love, care, acceptance, and respect is a serious-but-welcome responsibility.
Summer camp helps create life-long friendships, nurtures respect for the natural world, and is a safe place to get away from screens, busyness, and expectations for a time.
We believe summer camp is valuable for not only the campers, but also for all the staff and volunteers who interact with them.
People often ask how they can help support Shekinah’s summer camp program. Here are a number of ways:
1) Support camp with your prayers and affirmations. Pray for campers, counselors, volunteers, and general staff. If you know people involved, be sure to let them know you are thinking of them and appreciate their dedication to each other.
2) Volunteer at camp. Feeding a camp takes a village … and then some! We are still looking for volunteer cooks for the weeks of July 11-14, 18-22, and 25-29. Please contact Reno (reno@shekinah.ca or 306-94504929. While a week is great, a day is also helpful. Enjoy and all-expenses-paid retreat in the Timber Lodge while you help us out.
We are also still looking for a few Counselors-In-Training (CITs) for the same weeks.
3) Give financially. Summer camp is an expensive program. While we have slowly been moving towards charging campers the actual costs of camp, we still rely heavily on generous donations from people who feel the summer camp program is valuable.
It can easily cost $60,000 - $70,000 to deliver our summer camp program, and we are generally able to recoup about 2/3 of that cost from camper families. We rely on donations to cover the rest of the costs.
Are you able to help us out by investing in our summer camp program? If so, please consider a tax deductible donation to our summer camp program.
You can donate using etransfer, cheque (make a note for “summer camp”), orsafely online for credit card payments.
Thank you for all of your support for this valuable program.