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Summer Dream Camp
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Join Us as a Volunteer!Who can volunteer? Individuals, church youth groups, and company teams. We take a different approach to leadership. Our youths lead the camp, and our adults coach them! Youths practice leadership skills with the help of an adult.
There are many ways to get involved, for however many days or weeks you’d like to volunteer. As a “Leader-Buddy” you’ll be partnered with a young leader in charge of a group of 12. You can also be a reading buddy or lead Bible character lessons, help with basketball or cheerleading camp, help coordinate field trips, have fun swimming with the kids, and interact with all the animals at YouthWorks Ranch. There is plenty to do everyday! |
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Sponsor a Kid for CampThe camp is free for all kids who attend, so none are excluded due to financial need. A majority of children come from low income housing apartments in North Tulsa.
Sponsor a child for a week | $50 Sponsor a child for the summer | $400 Be a Summer Dream Camp Lead Sponsor | $5,000+ |
What Do You Learn at Summer Dream Camp?
Summer Dream Camp in North Tulsa is hands-on and interactive. Youths learn leadership skills, develop their creativity, grow in communication skills, learn science, math and reading, and go on daily fun and education field trips. A significant focus is on helping them identify their life dreams and learning how to stay in school and get the education needed to fulfill those life dreams. We believe youths who attend the Summer Dream Camp should finish camp more equipped than they came in. And we work hard to ensure they receive plenty of opportunity and training to do just that. Here are 4 descriptions of specialty weeks of camp to help you see how much fun we have:
SCIENCE & EXPLOSIONS WEEK
God has made an absolutely fantastic world! During this week, we would love to have the kids participate in exciting science lessons that helps them learn the amazing world God has created and how to apply science into their own life. At the same time, we want the kids to have super fun with creative science and have everything from safe (but fun) chemical explosions and learn about animal science. |
BASKETBALL/CHEERLEADING WEEK
Basketball coaches and cheerleading coaches are putting together an exciting week for the kids. Skills assessment at the beginning and end of this week will help the kids see how much they have learned during the week. Basketball/Cheerleading Week will finish with basketball tournaments and cheerleading competitions where kids can earn prizes for showcasing their new skills. |
DREAM WEEK
The last week of summer camp, the children will be learning how to discover and plan out their life dreams. The kids will meet with people who have gotten to live out their life dreams, to showcase the fun parts of their careers and talk to the kids about how they reached their dreams. Then the kids will get to spend time with them over lunch, followed by dream field trips where they get to go to visit their professionals in action. |
CRAFTS
& ARTS WEEK Creativity and excellence will be the key to this week. The kids will be able to do art lessons such as painting, clay/pottery, sand art, mosaics, murals… the sky is the limit. Making stuff with their hands, maximizing their creativity and making gifts for others. |
SUMMER CAMP FAQWhy is it Called the Summer Dream Camp?
A key focus of this summer-long camp is to help the children of North Tulsa write down their life dreams, learn what it will take to accomplish those dreams, meet and have lunch with people who are living out those dreams today, and develop a plan on how to achieve them, including how to get early experience in their field of dreams, what they need to learn in school now, and how to get scholarships and funds to pay for the education they will need after high school. An overwhelming number of children in North Tulsa face significant obstacles to living out their life dreams. They have dreams just like kids from other parts of town – doctors, nurses, dancers, lawyers, construction workers, teachers, police officers, astronauts, etc. – but many do not achieve them because of all the discouragements all around them. More than 58% of children drop out of school before graduating and only 1% go to college or trade school to get the education needed to live out their dreams. The Summer Dream Camp intentionally works to reverse that. Why Do Youths Lead the Camp?
We have learned that the most successful way for the children to become leaders is to practice it in real life. Ever since our first summer camp 12 years ago when a 7-year-old girl (Allie) and an 8-year-old boy (Joshua) stepped up to be summer camp leaders, we have learned that children can definitely lead AND provide amazing ideas to provide the best ever summer camp for kids! With the help of one adult volunteer for each of our 12 child/youth leaders, the adults teach the children how to be servant leaders. How Long is the Summer Dream Camp?
The full camp runs 10 weeks, May 30 to August 5, 2021. When are Leader Training and Celebration weeks?
The 12 youth volunteers who are summer-long Camp Disciple Leaders and the 12 adults who sign up to be summer-long “leader buddies” will be treated to 4 days of training the first week in June and also an exciting adventure celebration week at the end of the summer during the first week in August. There will also be training each week throughout the summer for those who take smaller leadership roles and those who lead in shorter segments. For those who will be leading the children all summer, the first week of camp is leader training week, where the children and adults in leadership learn the best ways to serve children, review the curriculum, address discipline issues, understand the whole picture of helping children live out their life dreams, and help set up camp. The last week of camp (August 1-5) is leader celebration week where leaders are treated to amazing meals at some of Tulsa’s best restaurants, campouts with canoes and fishing at a beautiful lake, and many other fun surprises to show our appreciation! What are the Dates/Days/Hours for Campers?
The 10-week Summer Dream Camp – May 30 through Aug 5 – are for the campers, who are going into 1 st Grade through 4 th grade. Camp runs each day from 8am to 3pm. Breakfast is at 9, followed by 4 rotations, then lunch, and an afternoon field trip from 1pm to 3pm each day. Because we host the camp at Wesley Chapel, camp also runs on Sundays. Those who have church elsewhere come Mondays through Thursdays. The daily schedule is as follows: 8:00am Drivers begin picking up children from homes and apartment complexes 8:30am Daily Leaders Meeting 9:00-9:40am Breakfast 9:45-10:15am Rotation 1 10:20 – 10:50am Rotation 2 10:55 – 11:25am Rotation 3 11:30 – 12:00Noon Rotation 4 12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch 1:00pm to 3:00pm Field Trips 3:00pm Drivers take children home 3:00pm to 3:30pm Leaders Wrap Up & Clean Up VOLUNTEER FAQVolunteer as a Camp Group Leader
12 Children/Youths to serve as Camp Disciple Leaders. These 12 & their adult “leader buddies” will team up to lead and disciple 2 groups of 6 children while maintaining social distancing. 12 Adult “Leader Buddies” each partner with a Child/Youth Leader. These 12 adults and each of their young “Camp Disciple Leaders” will team up to lead 2 groups of 6 kids while maintaining social distancing. Together, each of these children / youths who will serve as Camp Disciple Leaders, along with their adult “leader buddies” will each oversee a group of up to 12 kids (separated into 2 groups of 6 children) this summer. That will allow for a total of 12 groups of 12 children (broken down into 2 groups each) for a total of 144 children and will allow the camp to separate the groups into safe social distanced groups who can grow together this summer. Each morning, each group will pick up a daily Adventure Packet that will tell them their group’s morning breakfast and devotion spot on the camp property for the day, then the location of their first rotation, second rotation, third rotation, fourth rotation, lunch spot for the afternoon, and daily field trip location. After they are done, they will take groceries home to their own family. Volunteer as Curriculum Planners or Rotation Set Up Helpers
When each group of children is finished with their daily breakfast and devotion in one of 12 locations around the summer camp property, they will look in their packet for instructions on where to go next on their daily adventure. Volunteers are needed to create the instructions and lessons for each area and set them up daily. Each team will go to one of these 12 activity locations: -Arts & Crafts Room -Character Classroom 1 -Clothes Pantry -Dream Planning Room -Food Pantry -Pizza Factory Kitchen -Pizza Factory Delivery Van -Ranch Van / Bus 1 -Ranch Van / Bus 2 -Reading Room 1 -Reading Room 2 -Thunder Basketball Court The children will experience the following in these rotations: -Develop their creativity and make gifts in the arts & crafts room -Get exercise at the OKC Thunder basketball court -Learn how to apply God’s word to their life decisions in the character classes -Serve others by organizing clothes in the clothes pantry -Learn how to live out their life dreams in the Dream Planning Room -Feed others by working in the food pantry -Experience a creative science lesson or care for animals at YouthWorks Ranch -Make pizzas for impoverished families in the Pizza Factory Kitchen -Deliver pizzas in the Pizza Factory Delivery Van -Improve reading skills through the Summer Reading Program in one of the reading rooms Volunteer with your Small Group / Church Group
Church youth groups and small groups that come out to bless the summer camp kids are an amazing force of God’s love! Whether one day, one week, one month or the whole summer, youth groups and small groups totally change the entire dynamic of the week and the kids get super blessed. Groups can come in to help with a normal week of camp or plan out and develop one of the 4 specialty weeks (basketball week, dream week, arts & crafts week, creative science week). The best part is when your volunteers buddy up with the children one on one or as close to that ratio as possible. You pick the week, we will work you in! Volunteer as a Reading Buddy
The children we focus on are those who struggle with reading. Only 33% of the 3 rd grade children in our North Tulsa community can read. That is a recipe for disaster! By empowering the children to read all summer long through the summer reading program, they improve their reading by an average of 1.48 grade levels. Reading buddies sit next to their buddy and allow the child to read to you. If they struggle a bit, help them sound out the word by repeating the sound of the letters. If they struggle a lot to read, then you read to them. It’s that simple! Each child who reads 20 books receives a coupon book with coupons for their favorite summer camp field trips. We take them to those places as their reward. Volunteer as Specialty Camp Planning & Helpers
DREAM WEEK – OUR MOST IMPORTANT WEEK OF THE SUMMER! Each week of summer camp, the children will be learning how to discover and plan out their life dreams. But during the big DREAM WEEK, all of that gets magnified! During this week, the kids will meet up with people who have gotten to live out their life dreams. Astronauts will come in, doctors, teachers, NFL football players, race car drivers and more will all come in that week to showcase the fun parts of their careers and talk to the kids about how they reached their dreams. Then the kids will be all prepared with 20 questions for their “dream professional” and will get to spend time with them over lunch, followed by dream field trips where they get to go to visit their professionals in action. VOLUNTEERS for this week will be working all summer to set up DREAM Week, including calling representatives of each child’s dream profession to have them come out during dream week, calling restaurants to get donated gift certificates for lunch for the kids and their dream professionals, calling area colleges/universities/ trade schools to set up tours for students to see what schools are like for their training, calling field trip places to set up “dream visits” for the kids to go explore the places they would work as adults. Doctors offices, police stations, ballet training centers, schools, etc. BASKETBALL / CHEERLEADING CAMP WEEK Basketball and cheerleading skills camp will be a super fun time for the kids! We will be looking for basketball coaches and cheerleading coaches to put together an exciting week for the kids. Skills assessment at the beginning and end of week will help the kids see how much they have learned during the week. Basketball/ Cheerleading Week will finish with basketball tournaments and cheerleading competitions where kids can earn prizes for showcasing their new skills. VOLUNTEERS for this week will be getting college or professional basketball players and cheerleaders to come visit the kids, setting up skills assessments, developing basketball and cheerleading lessons, bringing in character lessons that tie in with those sports, and getting scorers tables, jerseys, cheerleading outfits, Gatorade and snacks, basketballs, pom-poms, ref shirts, whistles, and more for the week. CRAFTS & ARTS CAMP WEEK Creativity and excellence will be the key to this week. We would love to see the kids be able to do art lessons such as painting, clay/pottery, sand art, mosaics, murals … the sky is the limit. Making stuff with their hands, maximizing their creativity. Making gifts for others. VOLUNTEERS for the crafts and arts camp week will be calling places like Purple Glaze, Philbrook Museum, Pinot’s Palace and others to ask if the children can come in to expand their creative side, calling museums and art teachers to help the children learn about famous artists, bringing in established artists and sculptors from our community to teach them impressive art skills, an so on! CREATIVE SCIENCE WEEK God has made an absolutely fantastic world! During this week, we would love to have the kids participate in exciting science lessons that helps them learn the amazing world God has created and how to apply science into their own life. At the same time, we want the kids to have super fun with creative science and have everything from safe but fun chemical explosions to learning about animal science. VOLUNTEERS will come up with dozens of exciting science lessons, obtain all the “ingredients” and materials, set up the science experiments and lessons, bring in Christian scientists who can teach the kids about God’s wonderful creation, and set up fascinating field trips for kids to see science in action. Volunteer as Field Trip Schedulers and Field Trip Chaperones
Every day of summer camp from 1 to 3pm, we send kids on fun field trips. This year, the kids will be in small groups, so when field trips like roller skating are set up, the kids will go on different days in small groups. Field trips will be everything from fun times to educational, dream-inspiring, college/trade school visits, and so on. VOLUNTEERS for this area will set up the field trips and/or go with the kids to make sure they have safe fun. Volunteer as Fund-Raising & Resource-Raising Helpers
Just like it sounds, these helpers are helping to get volunteers, supplies and raise $60,000 for the kids to come to camp. GoFundMe campaigns, calling campaigns, emails, Facebook campaigns are several ways to do this. VOLUNTEERS set the fund-raisers up, recruit volunteers, and collect materials. |