CARRY ON CAMPING

Community Shlicha, Or Ribon, discusses how summer camp can mould our future communal leaders.

first time in your life that you’re capable of so much more than you thought. You find that even if you went to sleep at 4 am, an hour later you will jump on your feet, apply the camp colors on your face, and sing and dance with your teammates to wake up the campers. You find that even after a whole day on your feet, you can keep running because more ropes must be urgently brought in to finish the structure on time. You discover what it’s like to dream and make it come true, to create a world from scratch. You discover how always, no matter how tired, hungry, stressed, how hot it is - you can find the energy to lift up the campers and teach them a new game. You experience success, you experience failure, and you feel the power of working together and giving 100% and then some. To this day, after spending the last seven years as an educator in various settings - I have not seen anything that compares to working on summer camp.

Robert Fulghum once wrote: “All I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten”, but if you ask me – all I ever really needed to know I learned in my youth movement.