Boys and Girls Clubs even the summer camp playing field

Two years ago, there wasn’t enough money to send Adriana Enriquez to the local Boys & Girls Club’s nine-week summer camp in Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhood.

The cost was only $50 but Adriana’s mother was expecting a baby boy and a baby shower produced very little of what the family needed for the infant.

“I felt really sad, but my mother told me that I had to understand. There wasn’t enough money,” she said.

When 11-year-old Roseland School District student found out this year that she would be going to the camp - her first time - Adriana quickly made up for lost time, taking advantage of the various activities, assuming a leadership role as a counselor-in-training and doing what she could to help younger camp members.

But the $50 camp fee doesn’t begin to cover the cost of molding young leaders and keeping minds active during the summer downtime.

It costs the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Sonoma County another $950 per student to pay for Camp Roseland, which has 305 members enrolled. The Boys & Girls Club receives enough federal funding from the U.S. Department of Eduction to subsidize pay for ?100 kids.

The club has to make up the rest through fundraising and philanthropic gifts. There’s no other way; the need is too great, said Jennifer Weiss, co-CEO of the Boys & Girls Club.

In the Roseland School District alone, the Boys & Girls Club has about 1,200 kids enrolled in after-school programs. Though not all will need it, there’s only enough money to enroll about one third of those kids into summer camp program.

“The number of kids that we are not serving is staggering,” Weiss said. “I think what we’re doing is amazing, but we can’t even scratch the surface.”

The Boys & Girls Club of Central Sonoma County hosts about 1,200 kids for summer camp at seven locations in Cloverdale, Geyserville, Healdsburg, Windsor, Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa.

About 300 families pay the full or a significant portion of the camp fee, especially families in Rohnert Park and Windsor. The club has funding for another 400 kids throughout its seven locations and pays for the rest itself.

At the club’s camps in Windsor and Rohnert Park, families who do not qualify as low-income are charged the full price of $75 per week, though there are discounts for siblings and for early registration. Also, there are some scholarships available for low-income families at those camps, Weiss said.

Weiss said the biggest need is at “Camp Roseland,” which this year is held at Roseland Creek Elementary School.

As with the club’s other locations, Camp Roseland includes programs designed to prevent learning loss, promote literacy, teach positive social behavior, encourage leadership and create opportunities for meaningful engagement with others.

The programs are centered around learning modules that are aligned with state academic standards. But unlike the school-year classroom experience, academic material presented during the summer camp session is more exciting, interactive and tangible, and invitation for the kids to think critically.

Michelle Edwards, the Boys & Girls Club’s vice president of youth impact, said the summer camp programs are designed to encourage children to think creatively.

“We want those young people to be academically successful and we also want them to be lifelong learners,” Edwards said.

Brett Shin, the Boys & Girls Club’s resource development manager, said half of the organization’s money during the school year comes from grant funding, which ends with the school year.

Across all seven locations, the club goes from serving 3,000 youth in after-school programs to about 1,200.

“That leaves somewhere around 1,800 youth in Sonoma County with nothing to do and nowhere to go during the summer,” Shin said in an email. “Remember, these are families that can’t afford the $200-$400 per week average costs of various summer camps in the area.”

Shin said that each year, many local youths do not have access to the summertime learning opportunities and as a result fall further behind in math and reading.

About 73 percent of the club’s summer members are Latino and 81 percent are from low-income families that wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford a camp, much less an intensive 10-week summer learning program, he said.

Fundraising and local philanthropy is so crucial, the club has scheduled a “Day at Camp” visit this month for existing and potential donors. Weiss and Shin said those who attend can see for themselves the value of the programs and the effect they have on Roseland kids.

The hope is to raise more money so more kids can attend; every $1,000 donation pays for a child’s summer of learning, Weiss said.

At Roseland Camp earlier this week, during an afternoon spirit rally held in the Roseland Creek Elementary quad, kids were asked what they would be doing if they if weren’t at camp. Several kids said watching TV or playing video games.

The opportunity to attend Camp Roseland is not lost on Daniela Valdez, 12, or her parents. Daniela, like Adriana Enriquez, is a counselor-in-training.

“They really want me to take advantage of what we have because my parents didn’t have that,” she said.

Diego Luna, 12, said his parents “would like me to fulfill my dream of going to college and graduating and having an amazing career.”

For more information about the “Day at Camp” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. ?on July 24, call 528-7977 x104.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.