Ahhh September, the days are getting a little shorter and the nights are certainly cooler. It is a quiet, peaceful time of year around camp. Wait a minute what is going on at the waterfront? Lifeguard training? It looks like it is the directors and senior staff. What a great time of year to find time to sharpen up their skills.
Who wouldn’t want to be in the lake on such a ‘Fine Maine Day?’
For year round staff and those that commit to camp as part of their regular summer routine the late summer and fall are a great time to start getting prepared for the next season. We are constantly improving our own personal skills, planning and preparing, taking advantages of training opportunities and striving to be the best that we can be in order to provide an exemplary camp experience for our girls.
After a little down time at the end of camp we are back in action ready to get things rolling for 2016. In the month of September alone we will be renewing our certifications, attending workshops, meeting with other camp directors for round table discussions, taking online courses and of course working on site to make improvements and additions for the 2016 season. Camper enrollment is already ongoing and we will start our rehiring for staff later this month.
Our Runoia 2016 community is already forming and we are excited to connect with every new member.
The life of camp director is never dull and even when camp is not filled with campers and staff there is always something to do.
Camp Runoia provides us all with the opportunities for Building Life Long Skills!
There is a lot of buzz particular in schools but also in the wider community about kids reaching adulthood prepared for their future. There is a need for youth to be skilled enough to navigate the world into which they will be employed and living. These so called ‘21st century skills’ will hopefully enable a young person to gain the greatest potential success in their life and will be sought by both higher education institutions and employers.
Summer camps have been watching this trendy terminology with a happy glint in their eye as the intentional learning that we provide every day in a safe and fun environment fits right into this model. Camps can easily argue that they can complement the developmental components of 21st century skills in an environment that varies so greatly from school that it allows for more and varied success. Camps are not just a somewhat expensive commodity that either provides child care or a ‘fun’ way to spend the summer, they are learning environments where children don’t even realize they are engaging with skill development.
Camps often work hard to convince parents that first and foremost their children will be safe and secondly that they are providing good value for money in the skills that campers leave with.
Often parents may focus on hard skills – did their child get better at tennis or swimming? It is the camp benefits that are perhaps less tangible which meet the 21st century skill set, a deeper appreciation for nature, the ability to build relationships and make connections, greater independence, more resilience (it does rain at camp sometimes!).
We are proud to be actively promoting 21st century skills and look forward to sharing more moments of learning with our girls this summer. Camp Runoia building lifelong skills.
This has been a summer of strong women. And strong young ladies, too, growing up and into strong Runoia women to be reckoned with.
Strong Runoia women who can cross an ocean and a language barrier to sing absurd songs that wouldn’t make sense even with ten translators. To make friends with girls whom they may never see again but whose lasting impression are faces made into a camera lens or peculiar slang phrases or dance moves learned that will impress people back home.
Strong Runoia women that can chance a return to their camp home, knowing how much they’ve changed in a year or three years or seven years since being here last and still walk bravely through the Runoia gates, on time for their date with fate.
Runoia Co-Founder Jessie Pond
Strong Runoia women who after seemingly endless days of rain and clouds can be with each other and still manage to cast and reflect enough inner sunshine to light up their whole cabin for the… tenth day straight.
Strong Runoia women that can make magic with the most minimal of props – turning a boa into the base of a winning Miss Tacky Runoia costume, a deck of cards into a full-fledged casino, a small garden gnome into a summer’s worth of amusement.
Strong Runoia women that may complain when the shack pix are always in use and seating on the dining hall benches is snug, but can only truly rest easy when all of their cabin-mates are sleeping in rooms beside them, returned from Fairy Ring, Oak Island, Gulf Hagas and the most strenuous of “out-of-camp trip” locations… The Loft.
Strong Runoia women that can turn any moment into song and re-imagine any song for the perfect moment. Bonus points for performing said song costumed and in front of the entire camp.
From Early Years Runoia Teams
Strong Runoia women that can enter the fold and begin to gather Great Pond memories and experiences while sharing their own knowledge of the Great World Outside Runoia (GWOR for short)… Bonus points for making said memories or experiences while costumed and in front of the entire camp.
Strong Runoia women who have seen enough to know all, yet can still accept that a new camp tradition can be begun at any moment because in fact, all of the most special ones we share were once new too.
Strong Runoia women that can carry forth all these very most important traditions while allowing camp to grow and change and flex with the years. Who knew that each strong women that comes through the gates is a new vessel for the continuation of those traditions while also being a catalyst for equally essential change and freshness.
This Log is dedicated to all the strong Runoia women and young women of 2009.. and of course, the men that are strong enough to them here.
Carrie Murphey, one of the new ones
Dedication to the 2009 Camp Runoia Log by Carrie Murphey
As a 20-years-old Hungarian girl it was quite a big deal for me last year when I decided to apply for a summer camp counselor program at Camp Leaders to work and travel in the U.S.
So on June 17th 2014 the biggest adventure in my life had started. I was really excited when I said goodbye to my parents at the airport but surprisingly not scared at all. I was facing a 10-hour flight from Budapest to Boston and when I arrived at camp I’d been awake for almost 24 hours. Fortunately a ready-to-sleep bed was waiting for me at camp.
Hamming it up with Mark on the lake
I had expected that I will learn thousands of new things during the summer: food, animals, games, songs, places, language, traditions, rules, different cultures and many new people. And my expectations weren’t false – I had widened my perspective in many ways.
Hungary is a really small country in Europe – only about 36,000 sq miles so as the State of Maine. Now you can imagine how unbelievably huge is the U.S. for me that I only realized first during my one month travels after camp.
I have learned Runoia terms like EP, QP, Mahadin, Lodge, Gaga, green machine, CIT etc. I had the opportunity to join flag raisings, hear loons at night, celebrate 4th of July, sit on a yellow school bus, eat Gifford’s ice cream and dirt pudding, and sing all the Runoia songs at campfire while eating marshmallows. And of course I was able to teach my favorite activity, sailing for the kids.
Laura out sailing with campers
I’m really grateful for that summer at Runoia where I’ve met a lot of wonderful people who I am able to see again hopefully in a few months for the summer of 2015.
Laura Meszaros, from Hungary, lived in junior end and taught sailing in 2014.
This new year, as I am trying to reduce excess material goods in my life, I fondly remember my first couple of summers at Runoia. It was the mid 90’s and the environmental movement hadn’t really hit yet. Well it hadn’t hit the rest of the country but it was alive and well with its roots in the Runoia trash house. Reduce, reuse, recycle was already the mantra and Betty Cobb its biggest proponent.
There was no dumpster at camp back in those days and all the trash had to be hauled to the Belgrade transfer station. As you can imagine at Runoia there were awesome systems in place even for trash management. There was a compacter in the back of the kitchen. I had never seen one before and to be honest the noises it made terrified me a little but it magically turned a large bag of garbage into a small square foot of squashed matter. Paper products were burned after the Saturday night cookouts (not really best practice these days). Cups and plates were always stacked (and still are) to take up less room in the trash. Everything that could be reused or recycled was.
Betty was often found ensuring that the actual trash did not contain any recyclable items. Her goal was not to terrify people into carrying their entire trash pile home with them but to educate us about the need to protect the earth’s resources. She would often say that she was not doing it for herself but for the children as they would be the ones that would inherit the problems.
I am grateful for the lessons I learned even if I was called out in assembly because Betty had found an envelope with my name on it in the trash not the recycle! Sadly Betty’s concerns are now ringing true as we see the impact a lack of attention to resource management is having on our earth’s future. I hope that the Runoia community will long continue to promote environmentally good practices and that it will become a life skill that our girls take home with them.
Make a difference in your home and community, just recycling is no longer enough what else can you do?
“If every household in the U.S. used just one less 70-sheet roll of paper towels, which would save 544,000 trees each year. If every household in the U.S. used three less rolls per year, it would save 120,000 tons of waste and $4.1 million in landfill dumping fees.” (From the Paperless Project).
This summer during their 7 weeks at camp our incredible group of CIT’s managed to fit in more than 20 hours each of community service. They participated in a wide range of activities from seeking out invasive Eurasian milfoil along our camp shoreline to running the kids table at the local Aquafest.
They put to use the skills they gained through their CIT program while also providing much needed support to local organizations that rely on volunteers to operate.
They also increased Camp Runoia’s visibility in our local community and built positive connections between camp and area organizations. They were able to chat with summer visitors about the camp experience and the value camp plays in their lives.
It was a powerful experiential learning experience for the girls and the skills they worked on translated easily to other aspects of their CIT program and to their everyday lives. The lifelong skills and enthusiasm for volunteer service that they built at camp will stay with them as they grow and learn in life.
What are you doing to make a difference in your community?
Spring time is a happy time at Camp Runoia. It’s basically a celebration! We are excited about the summer season and everyone arriving and getting busy with camp fun. We are busy as bees buzzing around getting buildings spruced up, lawns and trails cleaned up and ordering equipment and supplies for the fun summer ahead.
New in 2014? Lots of things. Among them honey bees! You may have heard a buzz at Runoia and it’s true. We have two bee colonies located in two hives. Both hives are healthy and producing honey and taking care of their queen and producing more honey bees.
Our honey bees will be pollinators for local farmers (as well as our own farm and gardens) and hopefully they will produce honey we can all taste and share at camp! We are learning as we go and with the help of other bee keepers in Maine, we hope to keep our hives alive and healthy!
Honey bees are hard workers and aren’t the type of bees that want to sting people or animals. They are very busy doing their jobs which include guarding the hive, being field bees and pollinators, nursing the queen and other drone activities. If you are worried about a friend who is allergic, we will let you know where the bees are and how to avoid their area! Meanwhile, if you are a bee enthusiast, feel free to share anything with us at Camp Runoia about bees if you’d like to. We are all learning together!
This summer campers can don the bee costumes and learn more about bees. It will be a fun time on the Runoia farm!
The end of February comes quickly with the short calendar month and the longer days in Maine’s winter season. Every day the sun shines longer and brighter and we dream of the days when we hear the screen doors slam, girls voices in laughter, song and friendship.
So much happens at camp.
Wilderness Trips Build Lifelong Skills
There’s growth and learning, building of lifelong skills in activities and receiving support to navigate independently within the community of camp. Other aspects:
Becoming your personal best
Finding friends and building relationships throughout the summers of youth and beyond.
Working through the agony of defeat and experiencing the glory of trying something for the first time.
Guiding our Runoia campers are dedicated youth professionals; coaching, supporting, and making campers laugh when they thought they were going to cry. Basically camp counselors become the adults campers treasure and look up to for years to come. Counselors focus on campers building skills, increasing self-esteem, learning to advocate and being the “stand up girl”. They also create a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the process.
Skill Building at Camp Runoia…… Happens All Day Long
Our parents are thankful Runoia is so much more than s’mores and fun. Sure we have that going on, but, the depth of camp: learning about yourself and what you contribute to the whole, intentional youth development and life skill building is farther afield for your every day camp program.
One parent sent me an email and this link this week:
A letter to a daughter which applies to all young girls and woman – so perfectly written and seems to fit with the Camp Runoia way so wanted to pass it on:
When I read Dr. Flanagan’s letter to his daughter I had to share as he so eloquently expressed the message my husband and I hope our 14-year-old daughter and 16 and 18-year-old sons live by. I only hope my husband and I are teaching these lessons daily by our example. I am a bit disheartened at the direction corporate culture has taken, not only increasing these societal expectations on young girls but also more recently targeting young boys as well. The eternal optimist in me knows we have wonderful examples all around our children – teachers, neighbors, camp counselors, scientists… to name a few. We simply need to help our children and ourselves understand these are the people we need to emulate rather then the false role models created by corporate marketers.
This week Camp Runoia recognizes National Eating Disorder week. We encourage parents to take stock in the Runoia parent’s declaration (above). Also:
Explore resources with your children that include media literacy*, including awareness of advertising and marketing manipulation of girls (and boys).
Help your children to understand how they are marketed toward to “fit in”, “feel good about themselves” and the falseness this perpetuates at the risk of their own youth and their self esteem.
Leadership Skills Happen at Every Age Group at Runoia
Hats off to camps around the nation that delve a little deeper into the camp experience; to the camps practicing 21st century skill building, youth development and creating communities to belong to without fear of prejudice, exclusive cliques, look-ism or humiliation.
Thanks to our Camp Runoia parent who brought Dr. Flanagan’s letter to our attention enabling us to share with our camp community, peers and professionals in camp.
And, finally, how many days before we are back in our camp “bubble” where our girls can take pressure off themselves, rub a little dirt in their palms and grow into the young people they will become? Not too many – its nearly noon and the sun is still high in the late February sky!
*www.hghw.org is a girl-serving organization teaching media literacy and much more – check it out!
For year round staff and those that commit to camp as part of their regular summer routine the late summer and fall are a great time to start getting prepared for the next season. We are constantly improving our own personal skills, planning and preparing, taking advantages of training opportunities and striving to be the best that we can be in order to provide an exemplary camp experience for our girls.
After a little down time at the end of camp we are back in action ready to get things rolling for 2016. In the month of September alone we will be renewing our certifications, attending workshops, meeting with other camp directors for round table discussions, taking online courses and of course working on site to make improvements and additions for the 2016 season. Camper enrollment is already ongoing and we will start our rehiring for staff later this month.
The life of camp director is never dull and even when camp is not filled with campers and staff there is always something to do.
