Marketing and Recruiting Campers of Color - Anti-Racism at Summer Camp
We’ve identified our own racism, removed cultural appropriation from our programming, and diversified our staff; marketing and recruitment are next.
The token Black kid in photos
Look at a camp website; they are all covered with amazing pictures of smiling kids sitting at the lakefront, wearing a climbing helmet with their arms around the shoulders of their new best friend, or mastering gaga or arts and crafts. Telling the visual story of camps through photography is nothing new to our industry.
Look again at the pictures. How many of them show a camper of color? How many have the only picture of a camper of color on the cover?
This is a hard, chicken-and-egg question. How do we show our camp as a welcoming space to kids of color if we don’t have kids of color at our camp to photograph?
This is something that each camp will have to work out for themselves. However, it is disingenuous for us to show more campers of color than we really have.
If a photo array of our camp suggests a diverse camper audience, and a family of color arrives to find themselves the only camper of color, that is not being anti-racist. We can’t claim to be something we are not.
Go to them
In order to increase the diversity of our campers, we have to get our name and reputation into new audiences. We must get into their communities; don’t wait for them to come to us. To provide a real service, not just marketing, we can offer to lead programming at schools.
In school or after-school programs during the offseason
School break programs
Booths or activities at science fairs or school carnivals
Let them know who you are before asking them to travel outside their comfort zone. Spend some time building relationships with your intended audience.
We know that relationship building is one of our most effective marketing tools we have. Asking parents to hand over their children for a week or a summer will require building that relationship. A face-to-face conversation with a parent in a setting where they are already comfortable will recruit more campers than a flashy brochure in the mail for a place 3 hours away. We have to go to them.
Communicating the camp story to a new audience
To reach a new audience, we must realize that they might not speak the same “language” as we do within the camp community. Look through the description of your camp on your website, printed materials and social media for camp specific knowledge and terms that might be unfamiliar to folks outside of camp. Change or remove camp jargon as appropriate.
Kapers or other names for camp chores
Flag or color ceremonies
Badges, Raggers, or other merit awards
We want to use shared language to create community within our camp, but we have to balance that with not excluding outsiders while convincing them to join. Consider asking someone outside of your camp community to read through your materials to help you identify these terms. This language is such a big part of who we are as camp people that we don’t even see it.
The understanding of camp might also be different for folks who only know about camp from the movies. Let’s make sure we are all communicating that camp is more than inattentive counselors, food fights, and sneaking from one cabin to another. We know that Wet Hot American Summer is wildly inaccurate, but does everyone?
New audiences might also literally speak a different language. Translating materials is important if you want to reach new audiences of color. Hire someone to do this. Also, hire staff that speak that language to support campers and communicate with parents.
What happens at camp
Make sure campers know what to expect at camp. What does a day look like: how much time is spent indoors vs outdoors and on what activities. This is a basic good marketing strategy for any audience, but being extra clear is important for folks who aren’t familiar with camp.
Do parents know what their camper is doing, and why? Is the “why” clear to folks from different backgrounds and with different life trajectories? For example, how is horseback riding going to help someone who is never going to see a horse again? Make sure they understand!
Consider the intersection between programming and marketing. Some families might be more drawn to a program that provides some amount of academic enrichment. Camp is an awesome place for kids who don’t always do well in a traditional public school classroom to see that learning is great. STEM, reading & journaling, can fit into any camp well, and be a draw for camper families who might be more familiar with the idea of summer school.
Even if you just focus on having fun at camp, and don’t have an academic component, explaining how and why camp is important for all children is an important part of recruiting new audiences to our market.
~LEILANI NUSSMAN
I am a mixed-race Kanaka maoli (Hawai’i) and white summer camp director. I use she/her pronouns. I live on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish people, past and present. I speak for myself and from my own lived experience. I still have work to do.
RESOURCES
Curriculum and training organizations
Intro to Race Discussions/White Fragility
So You Want to Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo
Stamped from the Beginning - Ibram X. Kendi
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? - Beverly Daniel Tatum
Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Paulo Friere
White Fragility - Robin DiAngelo
How to be an Anti-Racist - Ibram X. Kendi
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome - Joy DeGruy
Black Faces, White Spaces - Carolyn Finney
*Amazon affiliate links support the Equal Justice initiative
Articles
Click to see the Other Posts in this Series
A Note From Travis
We are thrilled to be welcoming Leilani Nussman as a writer on the Go Camp Pro blog! Leilani is a Camp Pro from the US Northwest and she has spent her summer as part of our Camp Mavericks discussion on Racism, Privilege and Summer Camp. I was THRILLED when she asked if she could capture her thoughts on Anti Racism and summer camp in this space.