It is crunch time for Campfire! We are excited to continue to grow our camps and leadership team! We were hoping to get 35 participants for our adult camp in June, and 45 participants in our July teen camp. A Christian school in Montería, a city in our region, reached out to us about sending a group of students to participate, and we were so excited to receive an even more diverse group of youth.
One of our goals for Campfire, is for its programs to be accessible to all people regardless of their financial state. Because of this, we offer scholarships to help decrease the cost for youth who need some help paying. We do this on a sliding scale, per applicant, but generally the cost to give 1 youth a full scholarship (they still pay 10%) or 2 youth a half scholarship is $60 CAD. This year, if you would like to help send youth to camp, you can donate to the project directly at lamcanada.ca/project/147/campfire
Please designate your gift for the scholarship fund.
One of our other goals for Campfire this year is to increase follow-up with participants, giving them ways to get involved with Campfire and connect with one another between program dates every year. We’ve been doing this in two ways this year: #1: Campfire Conversation Club:
We have invited previous participants of Campfire to help us to spread the word! Depending on each ambassador’s gifts and desires, they are helping us run activities at camp days, visit churches and universities, make social media publications, and plan fundraisers. It has been an absolute pleasure to have them come alongside us and take ownership over Campfire.
We’ve begun meeting every week at a cafe to practice English. For two hours, we chat about different topics and do silly activities in English. This club has grown very quickly, and to our surprise and delight, many of the people attending have never been involved with Campfire before! It’s been a delight to get to know new people in and outside of a church community and see their language confidence grow every week. We organize this alongside our good friends Kat and Jean-Paul.
Our REACH program, in partnership with Camp IAWAH, is moving forward quickly! Our second year running the program, we have recruited participants and have begun meeting with them weekly in preparation for the program this July. It’s fast approaching, and we’re excited for our two new Colombian leaders, Hernan and Alejandra, to join us during the program. Hernan and Alejandra have been senior staff in our Campfire camps and are an amazing couple who have a passion to serve and disciple. This will be their first time going on a hiking trip, and so they will be entering into the new experiences deeply with our Colombian participants!