Dearest Youth Project Community,
It has been such an incredible journey to work alongside you as we have navigated the realities of this past year together. Thank you for your patience, understanding, and incredible feedback as we have transitioned to almost completely online programming and services during this uncertain time. We have felt so encouraged, motivated, and inspired by your brilliance.
After thorough consultation with our staff, Youth Board, and Board, we have decided to host our summer camps through two routes:
We understand that not being able to offer sleep-over camp again may feel disappointing for many, as we understand how important and exciting that element of camp can be. This decision comes from a place of deep care for you, our volunteers, and our staff; we want to make sure that everyone feels as safe as possible and that we all work to reduce any spreading of COVID-19. We agree that sleeping in small cabins and facilitating activities with 50+ youth from all over the province is too high risk for us and also currently violates Nova Scotia Health Authority guidelines.
Although camp will look a lot different this year, we are thrilled to bring our creative gay sparkle and pizazz into creating online spaces and hopefully day-camp elements that celebrate youth, build spaces for meaningful connections, and are full of magic.
Camp Seahorse (a camp for anyone 25 and under who identifies as part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community) is scheduled for Thursday July 8th – Sunday July 11th and Camp Coyote (a camp for anyone under 25 who identifies as Two Spirit and/or is part of the trans and non-binary community) is scheduled for Thursday August 5th – Sunday August 8th. Regardless of our capacity to offer day-camps, Camp Seahorse and Camp Coyote will be offered on Zoom during those times – if we will be offering day-camps the activities will occur during those days as well.
Camp Seahorse Registration: HERE
Camp Coyote Registration: HERE
For day-camp registration, you will notice that you can select a variety of places that we will be offering camps including: Halifax/Dartmouth, Wolfville, Lunenburg, New Glasgow, Yarmouth, Cape Breton.
We will be offering a concentration of workshops, events, activities, and some fun surprises! Usually camp is for people under 20, but due to our online forum, the difficulty in confirming ages of participants, and the importance of community right now – we are now accepting registration from anyone 25 and under.
Although we have funders, we still rely on the generosity and care of our community in order to continue providing the crucial programs and services we offer to queer and trans youth like our camp programs. If you have capacity to donate to camp to pay facilitators, artists, and help supplement materials cost please click HERE.
All our love,
The Youth Project staff