Camp Invention Counselor

38 hours - Service

During the summer of 2012, I came across the opportunity to volunteer and work as a camp counselor for Camp Invention, a local camp that served the children in my community from grades kindergarten to fifth. I was familiar with this camp from not only attending it when I was in fourth grade, but from my younger siblings attending multiple times. I served as a volunteer every week day for five days from the hours nine to three and served as mainly an assistant to the head of the camp, completing any responsibilities that I was assigned. My responsibilities ranged all the way from cleaning, teaching, and painting. Through this activity, I was able to work collaboratively with others, develop new skills, and consider the ethical implications of my actions.

Entering the activity, I thought doing the service itself would be valuable in teaching me life lessons. However it wasn’t the service, but it was the children that made me learn the most about myself and pushed my to develop new skills. The value of this service came from helping children find their potential to be creative and in a more literal sense, make an innovative and creative invention out of a pile of trash. Not only did this activity help me by allowing me to spend my summer in a more productive way, but I believe my service time at this camp helped the children of my community as well. I was able to spend a large amount of time a day with children and pushing them to find new methods of being creative while keeping them safe and healthy.

Although Camp Invention was run by a multitude of people, I believe that my service helped the community and made me into a stronger person. The lessons that I learned from the children to make something beautiful from anything taught me how to be a more optimistic individual.

JULY 2013

    This summer in July, I went back to volunteer for Camp Invention. In the previous summer, my time spent in Camp Invention was so valuable that I decided to go back for a second year. Unfortunately, I was not able to work for the entire week because of another employment, but I volunteered in my free time., which summed up to be about 8 extra hours. I continued to show commitment by returning my second year.