When AVI CHAI began to work in the field of overnight (“resident”) camping, we funded the Lekhu Lakhem program for the directors of JCCA–affiliated camps. Developed by the Mandel Center for Jewish Education at the JCCA through the talented leadership of Dr. Alvin Mars and his successor, Dr. David Ackerman, Lekhu Lakhem took 24 JCC resident camp directors on a guided and mentored personal Jewish learning journey that instilled an awareness of the directors’ power to develop and shape a Jewish educational vision for their camps. The results have been impressive and in some cases remarkable. Many Lekhu Lakhem directors and their staff have learned to build and weave Jewish experiences and traditions throughout the summer that can incorporate the diversity of the Jewish backgrounds of the JCC campers.
The positive effects of overnight camp on Jewish children is well-researched and documented, most recently in the new Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) report, “Camp Works”. Whether and how these experiences can be translated to day camp is an open and interesting question. But the success with their resident camps has already inspired the JCCA to begin a parallel focus on enhancing the Jewish outcomes of their day camps, whose 65,000 campers dwarf the 18,000 overnighters each summer.
Day camps have not attracted the kind of funding that resident camps have enjoyed for the past decade, and the JCCA, through its just-published survey report on directors, staff and parents from their day camps , intends to spotlight these camps and some opportunities for enhancing the Jewish educational experience they can offer. The day camp statistics show one of the major challenges the JCCA will face in trying to make the summer day camp experience a more lasting, Jewish one: a third of the day campers and almost one-quarter of the staff are not Jewish. At a minimum, it will make it much more challenging to create an immersive Jewish experience when a considerable portion of campers may feel excluded. In accommodating the campers’ diversity, one alternative, already employed by some camps, is to focus on universal messages found in Judaism and those values shared by society, but this dilutes the opportunity for a more overt Jewish message and experience and may make it hard to distinguish a JCCA day camp from other non-Jewish but values-based camps.
On a positive note, day camp parents responding to the survey reported that while they did not put a priority on the Jewish programming of the summer, most were happy with whatever was offered and would not be opposed to a stronger Jewish educational experience if it did not significantly change the camp. In a competitive field, the fear of rocking the boat in ways that might result in lost enrollment and tuition is very real, so this might embolden some directors to increase the Jewish educational parts of the summer experience.
Similar to the learning from Lekhu Lakhem, the report suggests that creating meaningful Jewish experiences requires better trained and inspired camp staff. Which leads to another JCCA strategy: focusing on training the 13,000 day camp staff, who are mostly high schoolers and a Jewish target group in their own right. The hope is that training programs developed for these staff will offer dual benefits: help the staff to become junior Jewish educators and provide positive Jewish learning experiences for their own growth.
Will Jewish funders see opportunities and expect a return on their investment in day camps comparable to that of resident camps? Even with their systemic challenges, the fact is that a huge number of Jewish children go to JCCA day camps, and that means that day camps probably can’t be ignored for too long. Last week I participated on a panel at a JCCA convening of their day and resident camp directors to discuss the field. With me were Jeremy Fingerman, CEO of FJC, which, like AVI CHAI, currently works only with overnight camps; and Dan Kirsch, a consultant for the Grinspoon Institute of Jewish Philanthropy (GIJP). The Grinspoon Foundation has invested many millions in camp scholarships, matching grants and providing experienced consultants to strengthen the governance, marketing and fund-raising capabilities of almost 80 overnight Jewish camps. They also helped fund the new JCCA day camp study and have taken a first step in working with the day camps through a pilot program that focuses on a few JCCs together with their day and resident camps, to provide the same kinds of services that GIJP has provided in the past just to the resident camps.
We are now watching to see what the JCCA and other funders propose as next steps for the day camps and to learn more about what Jewish educational outcomes can realistically be achieved within the limitations of the day camp structure.
Joel Einleger