My job is to encourage men’s clubs across Canada to sponsor youth to United Church camps, with the benefit of having the youth come back to the club meetings to tell about their week at camp.  The project has been very successful and is helping to revitalize clubs, introduce youth and their parents to the clubs and to help promote the sending of youth to United Church camps.

    The “Youth To Camp Project” was started in 1997 by Don Williams of Stirling Ontario.  He was very active in the church on many levels and had strong feelings for United Church camps and how they affected the lives of children.  He would always tell me “Send a kid to camp and change their life”. Since Don’s passing in 1999 his legacy has continued to grow and more lives are being affected than ever before.

    Many of you have been supporting youth in so many ways and some of you have been supporting your local United Church Camp for a long time.  I don’t want to take away from that, I just want all Men’s clubs across the country to join forces to help promote the importance on Christian camping. Our hope is that a greater numbers will help to encourage other clubs to sponsor more children.

    The idea of the project is not to pay the full price of camp, although that would be great, it is to send as many youth as you can to allow more to experience Christian camping for one week. Parents are asked to donate toward the project what they can and some of the youth can help out as well.  The parents are told that what ever they can donate will help to send other children. A tax receipt can then be given to the family for income tax purposes.

    If your club is interested in getting involved with the “Youth To Camp Project” you can get more information on the “Youth To Camp Project”  Web Site http://www.aots.ca/youth or you can contact us for a start up: youth@aots.ca

National Chairman for the
“Youth To Camp Project”