Counseling at Camp Hope
While our Education program won’t be focused on school work over the summer, we will have some of our students come participate in our annual Camp Hope program. For 8-weeks, kids are here from 8AM-5PM weekdays and they spend the days doing lots of activities. Just to name a few: swimming, field trips, summer reading, Bible lessons, and crafts that all match a theme for the week. Our volunteering church for that week helps us put together the lesson, songs, and activities our kids experience. Our Director of Education, Mariah Pitre has been operating Camp Hope for a few years now and has worked with churches and summer staff. “We can’t do what God is asking us to do without other believers helping,” she states referring to the large number of volunteers and staff we have that help with our operations.
With summer 2021 just around the corner, we’re looking to bring in more counselors who want to help with Camp Hope. Our summer counselors get to mentor kids (ages 5-12) from inner city, downtown Jackson. Camp Hope is a Christ centered program that offers community to staff which other camps might not offer. “What people have to bring is special and what we have to offer to our campers is also special,” Mariah states about the counselor program that people can apply to participate in.
How Camp Hope differs from other summer camps is its focus on community. Our kids come from the Jackson area and get to experience a fun filled summer right in their neighborhood. Our summer counselors get to do the same living here at We Will Go. “You also get to be in the neighborhood our kids are from getting to experience what their daily life is like,” Mariah says about the summer. Counselors are placed in charge of one group, boys or girls, and stay with that group for the whole summer. They get to spend time with all of our campers but, get to bond and learn how to lead that small group of kids. Several counselors work together in leading and become a team, working together.
Every year, we see lives transformed and people walking away having experienced the love of Christ. Speaking about the challenges we faced in the summer of 2020, Mariah shared, “To get to meet our community in a real way, we had to change what we were doing due to Covid. But, our families were even more open and we still got to impact our kids even though the needs changed.” With Camp Hope, we have the opportunities for churches and teams to bring VBS lessons, worship songs, crafts, and volunteers to make an impact in our kids lives. But, our program doesn’t just impact our kids; it also has changed the lives of volunteers as well. “We’ve had visitors give their lives to Christ here. We’ve even had visitors continue to volunteer or stay on as staff to keep helping at We Will Go. People come from different states to join in with Camp Hope. People who join in, often see the impact and want to continue coming back to see Jesus change Jackson.”