WHICH CAMP IS RIGHT FOR YOUR CHILD?

PRESS RELEASE 

PLYMOUTH, VT. – November 15, 2022 – Farm & Wilderness, a day and overnight adventure summer camp on 8,000 acres of New England countryside, announces a new Affordable for All initiative that includes a transparent financial aid estimator to allow families instant access to the cost of camp for their family. In addition, Farm & Wilderness will support families beyond tuition assistance to address the full cost of camp. Camp registration for Farm & Wilderness is now open.

The new financial aid estimator will give families information on what they can expect to pay based on their annual income at the time they register.  Especially for families who might assume summer camp is beyond their financial reach,  transparent information on the cost of camp will encourage them to learn more about Farm & Wilderness’ diverse programs. As an example, the cost of a 3-week session of overnight camp (including transportation) for a family with an annual income of $50,000 will be under $1000. 

“Summer camp financial aid known as ‘camperships’ opens opportunities for all kids to have an experience of a lifetime,” said Frances McLaughlin, Executive Director of Farm & Wilderness. “We’re committed to demystifying our campership program for new and returning families. We hope folks won’t assume they  are ineligible for financial aid. The new estimator will help families determine if our programs fall within their budget.” 

There is more to the cost of camp than just tuition. There is also transportation to camp, clothing and gear, and potential loss of income from parents attending a visiting day.  These additional expenses also keep camps out of reach for families.  Farm & Wilderness  Affordable for All initiative goes beyond tuition assistance to address the other costs of camp.. The expanded campership program will cost $1,050,000 per year. This includes $800,000 in tuition assistance and $250,000 for supplementary support and outreach and engagement activities. Farm & Wilderness hopes to support 200 - 220 families through the Affordable For All initiative.

Farm & Wilderness was able to launch the Affordable For All initiative with a  transformative gift of $500,000 by Helen Garrison. For three generations, members of the Gardiner family have attended Farm & Wilderness, beginning in the 1940s and continuing through to today. 

“The camp and its values have shaped the lives of so many Gardiners,” said Arthur Gardiner, Helen’s younger brother, a camp alumnus and a member of Farm & Wilderness Board of Trustees. “We know what it takes to run a camp and make it truly accessible and affordable for all families. We want to see children from all backgrounds have access and spend a summer living in community with each other.” 

Farm & Wilderness has offered financial aid since opening in 1939 and the campership program has a long history of helping to make camp accessible and affordable. Over the last few decades, the price of overnight camp has become out of reach for most families and we recognized that we needed to update our campership program.  Guided by our values, feedback from parents, and research on innovative payment  models, we crafted the Affordable For All initiative to provide an authentic and holistic access to camp. 

For more information about donating to Farm & Wilderness’ Affordable For All campaign, please visit: farmandwilderness.org/affordable-for-all

Media Contact: 

Charna Cummings

charna.cummings@gmail.com

617-529-3454

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE: F&W Launches Affordable For All Initiative

Three generations of the Gardiner family have attended Farm & Wilderness (F&W), beginning in the 1940s. The camp and its values have shaped the lives of so many Gardiners that when F&W launched its Affordable for All initiative, the family made a transformative gift towards that effort. Their $500,000 donation will enable more middle- and lower-income families to learn about F&W and how they can afford to send their children to camp. Helen Garrison, the eldest of the first generation of Gardiners and a life-long educator and school administrator in New York City, made the gift on behalf of her family.  Sadly, Helen passed away in October of this year.

The oldest Gardiners — Arthur, John, and Fred — attended F&W in its early years. When they came home from camp, their parents said, “we were really different people — more centered and more relaxed as we were struggling rising into teenage years,” recalled Arthur Gardiner. “We would be around the table singing all the camp songs.” Arthur Gardiner was Chair of the F&W board in the 1980s and is a trustee today. One of Helen’s daughters and three of Arthur’s five children attended the camps, including one, Ned, who attributes to camp his life path as a geographer and a climate change scientist. Ned’s son Asa was Timberlake Big Lodge head last year, and Asa's cousin attended Salt Ash Mountain camp in 2021.

F&W launched Affordable for All in spring 2022 to engage more new families, make information about tuition assistance more transparent, and address the full cost of camp.  This initiative clearly captured many hearts among F&W alumni, staff, and friends. The Gardiner gift enables us to move quickly to implement this program.

“We know all it takes to run a camp,” said Helen Garrison. “It takes significant staff time and resources to recruit families, recruit and train staff, and deliver an excellent program.”

Financial support is certainly part of it: Affordable for All includes access to gear (a warm sleeping bag and a sturdy pair of hiking boots are pricey!) and transportation to and from Vermont. But more importantly, as far as the Gardiners are concerned, is building relationships with potential new camp families. By developing more partnerships with schools, non-profits, and community-based organizations up and down the east coast more families from all socio-economic backgrounds will get to know F&W--and F&W will get to know them!

Parents and caregivers who have never been to overnight camp — let alone a rugged, rustic place like F&W — may need some extra support to see us as a place their children can thrive. Why does my kid need a bug net? Will she see herself reflected in the other campers and staff? What is the food like? And what is a kybo? Affordable for All will provide more ways for families new to F&W to learn about us and the values that underpin our work. 

Arthur Gardiner says his family is particularly interested in investing in smart, dedicated, well-paid staff to develop that program. Building those relationships takes skill and time, and their gift is meant to facilitate both.

The elder generation of Gardiners grew up in Jim Crow Virginia and saw firsthand the harms of inequality. By making camp more affordable and accessible to a wider world of families, the expanded campership program aims to make socio-economic diversity among campers and staff a matter of fact at F&W and brings us one step closer to a more just world. 

“It is in our family thinking, let’s have more organizations like Farm & Wilderness that are bringing children together from those different social backgrounds. Be together and be friends and work together. They can communicate with each other and form teams to gradually heal the rift,” Arthur Gardiner said. “And really be honest together with each other. When you’re 11, 12, 13, 14, that’s really possible. If it happens, it’s enduring."

He goes on say, "Farm & Wilderness is only one voice, but that spirit is hugely important.”

On the night of August 9th, Becca Balint raised her arm in the air urging her supporters gathered around her: “Let’s give it up for F&W!” Becca, a Vermont state senator, had just clinched the Democratic nomination for the state’s one U.S. House seat. And in her acceptance speech, she recalled how she moved to Vermont for the first time in 1994 to take a job at Farm & Wilderness. One of the lessons she has carried with her from that time is the idea that “Work is Love Made Visible,” she told her supporters. “That’s what this campaign has been for me. Love for community. Love for Vermont. Love for each other, despite our faults.”

Becca worked at Farm & Wilderness for almost a decade, beginning as a rock climbing instructor in 1994 and continuing on in other leadership roles. She met her wife, attorney Elizabeth Wohl, at F&W, and the couple’s children have been F&W campers. 

In a state as reliably blue as Vermont, winning the Democratic nomination is typically as good as winning the general election, which Becca did with 63% of the vote!  She represents a lot of firsts: the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ person to represent Vermont in Washington. (Remarkably, Vermont was the last state to elect a woman to Congress.) 

Becca considers herself a principled, ideological progressive in the mold of Senator Bernie Sanders, who endorsed her in the primary. Her campaign’s tagline is “leading with courage and kindness.” She is particularly proud of having helped shepherd several pieces of legislation through the state Senate, including paid family leave, a minimum wage increase, a climate bill, and a reproductive rights bill. 

The state’s Lieutenant Governor, Molly Gray, against whom Becca ran in the primary, was initially favored to win based on her prior state-wide victory: name recognition, the support of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, and a compromising, pragmatic approach. But Becca pulled off not just a win, but a landslide, beating Gray by 24 points. “That is more than a win — it is a statement,” said Vermont journalist David Goodman. 

Becca won the election to the state senate in 2014 where she became the current Senate President Pro Tempore,  Even early in her political career, she credited the years she spent at Farm and Wilderness as an important step towards her later success. When she spoke with F&W’s Executive Director, Frances McLaughlin, about her time at F&W, Becca shared “So many years later, I bring [what I learned at] Farm & Wilderness to work with me every day.”  “It’s a transformational place for people,” she told the website Vermont Woman in 2017, after taking on the role of VT Senate Majority Leader. At Farm & Wilderness, “I became the person I wanted to be…A person who is not afraid to speak from a place of authenticity, and that’s not easy in politics.”