CAMPINTERACTIVE SUMMER 2009 Shepherd Internship Program Caroline Helms & Graham Sheridan

Introduction to Camp Interactive  Small non-profit located in the Kingsbridge area of the Bronx.  CI has two full-time staff members, with auxiliary staff for the summer sessions.  CI serves middle and high school aged inner-city youth from all over New York City.  CampInteractive (CI) is a not-for- profit organization that empowers at-risk, inner-city youth through the inspiration of the outdoors, and the creative power of technology.  CI believes that when urban teenagers step back into nature and forward into technology they gain invaluable skills, heighten their academic standing, and begin to realize more of life's possibilities.

CampInteractive Tech and Trek Center

The Staff

Inside the Center

Warehouse Project  CampInteractive stores its outdoors equipment in space donated by AOL-Time Warner New York.  One of our projects this summer was to organize and move all the equipment out of a POD storage unit and into the warehouse, scrape and paint the ceiling, clean and organize the equipment with the staff and our team of Summer Youth Employment Program students.

The POD Storage Unit

Some Order Returns

Summer Youth Employment Program  New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development runs the SYEP Program, which allows students under the legal working age to take summer jobs under a very strict protocol.  New York City, not the host organization, pays the SYEP students.  We managed the daily schedules for four SYEP students for ten days before our adventure trip with the students.

An SYEP Student in Inwood Hill Park

Vermont Trip  We went with CampInteractive students on a ten-day adventure trip in upstate New York, Vermont, and New Jersey.  This was many of the students’ first real outdoors experience- one student’s first time out of the five boroughs.  The students kept journals and documented the trip and will make a website about their experiences.  nt08/lemonheads.html nt08/lemonheads.html

Photography Class

Saranac Lake, NY

CI Students Backpacking on Mt. Mansfield

Mt. Mansfield

CI at Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream!

CI Student Leads an Alpaca Through the Agility Course

Final Campfire of the Trip

The Whole Crew

NYU University Hall