October 4, 2022
What We Learned About 4-H Camp in 2022
This year, Kansas 4-H camp was extremely successful on the whole. Overall, survey feedback and anecdotal commentary was positive. We had no medical incidents, and our staff welcomed more than 900 youth to Rock Springs Ranch for a 4-H experience - a similar number to 2021.
In a number of ways, 2022 was also more challenging than we expected. Staffing in all areas of our operation was a major issue (as it is across all industries right now) and drove some of our decision making relative to capacity. It inhibited our ability to do every piece of what we expected to do.
When things change, there's a general concern about how those changes are going to impact families and the reality is, that some are going to like the changes and others won’t. We saw that play out in the survey we sent to parents this year.
We view our experience this summer as a successful one in the first year of the change of camp model. There were a few themes that were consistent on the side of concerns.
The most consistent concern presented referenced this summer's discussions around the non-discrimination policy. We’ve shared that our policy for Kansas 4-H camp is the university policy. It can be found here: https://www.k-state.edu/nondiscrimination/.
We're confident that our practices keep youth safe.
The other consistent concern was housing arrangements regarding whether youth were placed in climate-controlled facilities. This is not a new concern, but we believe it was mostly born from expectations related to past experiences based on where different ages and genders of youth were housed.
We are continuing to look for opportunities and are actively working to upgrade facilities to allow for more climate control. For 75 years, we have offered housing without climate control and will continue to have some non-climate controlled housing for at least the near future.
We are going to continue to make housing arrangements based on need and number of campers registered.
We saw both positive and negative feedback regarding programmatic experiences and what activities youth did or did not get to experience that is common at camp. There is value in creating age appropriate progressive experiences in camp.
The biggest takeaway from programmatic concerns was that they were driven by expectations based on past experiences. We are committed to doing a more effective job communicating to parents and youth about their expectations about the camp experience.
We know that last year, a lot of decisions were not finalized until late in the process and this led to some of the challenges of expectations that were not met. We are committed to communicating in a much more effective way this year. During the next several weeks, we will be sharing information regarding what you can expect at camp next year as well as camp registration information.
We had specific commentary around the CIT program being a very positive experience and youth wanting to continue to participate in this program and eventually work at Rock Springs Ranch.
The survey gives you an idea of the group, but we know there are individual experiences that didn’t meet expectations and we are committed to continuing to get better.
We appreciate those of you who recognize the challenges of making those changes and have continued to reach out with messages of support and continue to reinforce with parents locally, that 4-H camp is a positive experience.