One of the most urgent issues for the summer-camp industry these days is not a lack of campers: It’s finding and retaining good counselors.
But you can help! Offer our staff a spring internship at your place of work or your business.
A five- or six-week internship, in May and June, provides young adults with the resume builders they believe they need and allows them to return to Walden for the entirety of our eight-week season.
If you were ever a camp counselor, the staffing problem might surprise you! Counseling was probably a great experience—in what you learned about yourself as well as in the friendships you formed. It may even have changed your life.
Yet fewer and fewer U.S. college students see camp counseling as a viable employment option. Summers, they’re told, must be spent gaining academic credits or interning in their field of study. Working at a summer camp is a “blow-off job,” according to some college placement offices.
Nonsense! Being a summer-camp counselor means putting all of those “real world” 21st century skills to work every day: Collaboration, communication and creativity go into most everything we do at camp. Counseling requires quick thinking and sound judgment. When college students are actively discouraged from taking summer-camp jobs, camps and campers lose.
That’s where you come in. Internships can be paid or unpaid, on-site or remote. They’ll need to complete their spring internships by June 11, when Walden’s Staff Training begins.
We have some amazing candidates: young adults studying medicine, journalism and finance, to name a few. It’s a win for you, as a mentor, and a win for us, as an employer.
We’ve added a form to your CampInTouch Account called Spring Internship. If you are in a position to create an internship or can encourage your employer to do so, then please fill out this brief form and return it to us by April 1. Our staff are eager to return to Walden. We don’t want them to have to choose between camp and their future careers!