PLAYWoodcraft Rangers Summer Enrichment Day Camp
A grant from LA2050 will support Woodcraft Rangers’ summer day camp by providing scholarships to children from low-income families. Woodcraft summer day camps enable 600 students to learn and play together with adult guides and mentors at Rosemead, Salt Lake, and South Gate parks for 11 hours/day over seven weeks, maximizing access for working parents. Each day includes arts, sports and wellness, STEM and leadership plus hot meals and academic support to help prevent summer learning loss.
In which areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?
East LA
San Gabriel Valley
South LA
In what stage of innovation is this project?
Expand existing program
What is the need you’re responding to?
Woodcraft Rangers youth live in neighborhoods scarred by years of housing instability, substandard environmental conditions, gangs, and violence. They attend schools with the state’s lowest academic performance rankings and have minimal access to enrichment activities and technological resources. 88% of Woodcraft students qualify for free/reduced-cost meals. Many do not have the opportunity to play in safe, supervised outdoor spaces during the summer.
Woodcraft day camps provide these youth with team sports and a wide range of engaging and enriching activities that divert them from unsafe activities. Camps also help their working parents, who know their children are safe and supported while out of school.
Woodcraft day camp programs are typically subsidized at $85/week, but this is a cost that many families can no longer afford. In response to the economic impact of the current crisis, we are proposing a new scholarship program to provide free enrollment for qualifying families.
Why is this project important to the work of your organization?
With a century-long history of growth and success in expanded learning, Woodcraft Rangers is a longtime leader in providing quality afterschool and summer enrichment programs. Since 1922, Woodcraft Rangers has brought together youth from different neighborhoods and backgrounds, guided by the steadfast belief that all young people deserve the joys of childhood and its defining developmental experiences. For the past 40 years, Woodcraft Rangers has focused exclusively on the highest-need neighborhoods and schools, serving youth whose families cannot afford traditional summer camp options.
In addition to being inclusive and accessible, Woodcraft camps offer a range of popular activities like sports, dance and art, along with cutting-edge activities like skateboarding, stop motion animation, and robotics. Camp staff receive trauma-informed training, and many serve as mentors during Woodcraft afterschool programs, providing additional security to young campers and their caregivers.
Approximately how many people will be impacted by this proposal?
Direct Impact: 600
Indirect Impact: 600
Please describe the broader impact of your proposal.
Woodcraft Rangers' long-term aim is to help shift the socioeconomic systems that disfavor youth from low-income families (largely families of color) and empower them to seek productive and rewarding lives that uplift entire communities. Programs are informed by decades of experience serving communities where children are traumatized by lack of opportunity, unsafe communities and pervasive negative influences including poverty, homelessness, gangs, drugs, crime, and violence. Woodcraft programs help counter these negative influences with positive activities and adult mentors, aiming to replace high risk behaviors with improved physical fitness, academic performance, graduation rates, and cognitive, social and emotional well-being.
Please explain how you will define and measure success for your project.
With the support of a partnership with LA2050, Woodcraft Rangers hopes to accomplish the following outcomes:
*Woodcraft day camps will be held at three locations in public parks for 11 hours/day, 5 days/week over 7 weeks.
*Woodcraft will launch a new scholarship program for qualifying families to provide free enrollment for up to 600 day camp participants.
*Woodcraft day camp staff will receive trauma-informed mental health training in partnership with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ Project Heal.
*Woodcraft day camps will maintain a maximum 20:1 student to staff ratio.
Which of the PLAY metrics will your submission impact?
College graduates
Community college completion
Obesity
Youth sports participation
Crime rates
Which of LA2050’s resources will be of the most value to you?
Access to the LA2050 community
Strategy assistance and implementation