Agassiz Village

At Agassiz Village, children and youth experience a supportive environment and can rely on responsible, caring adults as role models. We create an immersive, inclusive environment to provide youth with a safe, structured way to increase and practice social-emotional and leadership skills—building power through these skills to forge their own path to success. Our youth develop leadership and social-emotional skills like persistence, positive values, better decision making, and self-awareness, which maximizes their ability to thrive and eradicate behaviors that are precursors to dropping out of school, not going to college, or going to prison. Every aspect of our overnight summer camp is intentionally designed to achieve this goal—from serving three nutritious meals per day, to providing resources our target youth may not access at home (like the arts, boating and canoeing, hiking, archery, and learning to swim), to empowering older youth as near-peer mentors for our younger campers.

Agassiz Village is committed to ensuring our Social Emotional Learning and leadership enrichment summer camp programs are accessible for diverse, low-income, and under-resourced youth we serve who are survivors of trauma. In Summer 2022, 98% of children and youth received financial aid and/or full scholarships to attend our Social Emotional Learning and leadership enrichment camp. The majority of our campers in Summer 2022 paid approximately 8% of the actual cost of camp (an average of $131 to attend camp for two weeks, with the full cost in 2022 being $1,624 per child, per two-week session). Remaining costs are often supported or fully covered by our referral partner agencies, generous funders, and other sources of support raised through our fundraising plan. Moreover, we provide stipends for Juniors and salaries for Seniors in our Leaders In Training Program during the summer—removing barriers to ensure they are able to fully participate and benefit from our program’s intensive six-week summer session (as some of our target teens work to help support their families during the summer and out-of-school time, especially during this difficult period of inflation). These strategic enhancements are expensive, but crucial.

Agassiz Village provides social-emotional/leadership supports with holistic career/college readiness enrichment to increase wellbeing and improve the future trajectories of youth who must overcome these equity gaps. That’s why first and foremost, Agassiz removes kids from their communities of poverty and brings them to our beautiful 330-acre overnight camp in Maine—where we start all of our programs. At Agassiz Village, children and youth experience a supportive environment and can rely on responsible, caring adults as role models. We create an immersive, inclusive environment to provide youth with a safe, structured way to increase and practice social-emotional and leadership skills—building power through these skills to forge their own path to success. Our youth develop leadership and social-emotional skills like persistence, positive values, better decision making, and self-awareness, which maximizes their ability to thrive and eradicate behaviors that are precursors to dropping out of school, not going to college, or going to prison. Every aspect of our overnight summer camp is intentionally designed to achieve this goal—from serving three nutritious meals per day, to providing resources our target youth may not access at home (like the arts, boating and canoeing, hiking, archery, and learning to swim), to empowering older youth as near-peer mentors for our younger campers. Moreover, a study of 80 camps by the American Camp Association found significant growth in children’s social-emotional skills after one session of summer camp. Camp staff, parents, and children reported increases in children’s self-esteem, independence, leadership, friendship skills, social comfort, and values and decision-making skills, from the beginning to the end of a session. At Agassiz, we create intensive leadership challenges that empower each child and teen to develop self-reliance and self-confidence necessary to dream big, and to make those dreams a reality through greater engagement in their schools and communities.

Many campers say Agassiz is the place where they feel safest, make life-long friends, and learn the value of challenging themselves. Our in-person model provides the children and youth we serve with the mental health and emotional support they need at this time, while safely building age-appropriate leadership and workforce development skills that lead to post-secondary success. As a result, youth experience unique learning opportunities, are challenged to discover interests, uncover new skills, make lifetime friendships, and connect with inspiring mentors. In addition, teens in our year-round program are empowered to graduate high-school, prepared to be career/college ready, and have the opportunity to practice these skills through summer employment opportunities at Agassiz Village.