#yea camp

Hi! I’m Mod Ananya, and I went to YEA camp in the 2015 N.Y. session at Woodstock Farm Sanctuary. I am working on my activism group called Youth United Making An Impact, and projects for the environment. YEA camp gave me the confidence to make a difference, and you will gain an incredible supportive community if you go!!

Hey y'all! We have a new featured organization for March & April. 5% of every sale (not just profits) will be donated to YEA Camp. They're an all-vegan activist camp working to inspire and develop teens activists to become even more effective. Learn more about them at YEAcamp.org. 

… said my inner 13-year-old. When I first heard about Youth Empowered Action (YEA) camp, I started mentally packing my bags. All of the food is vegan, though the campers, kids ages 12 to 17, range from vegan to vegetarian to omnivorous and everywhere in between.

I got the skinny on YEA from founder and executive director Nora Kramer, and man, does she make me wish I could relive my teenage years. This is not your run-of-the-mill soggy-sandwich, papier-mâché-crafts, learn-to-swim camp. This camp is something incredibly special. Campers who attend YEA are on a mission to make effective change in one area of their choosing — factory farming, vegetarianism, the environment, gay rights, bullying, education. Talk about covering the spread! I don’t remember being half as passionate about anything more than how many inches of exposed leg I could get away with at that age.

At YEA, campers build skills to address the issues most vital to them. YEA covers four core areas of activism: knowledge, skills, confidence, and community. By the end of the weeklong stay, campers will have created an action plan to hopefully implement in the real world. YEA alumni have done some incredible things! Some campers have successfully petitioned for veg options at their schools; others started animal rights clubs, organized fundraisers for charities, created online stores for cruelty-free crafts, and gotten rid of dissection in their classrooms. It’s no wonder YEA camps are fostering the next generation of game-changers, law-makers, activists, environmentalists, and vegans. These kids are set up to succeed through confident and effective activism.

YEA camp is structured to allow every camper to tell their story and share their cause with their peers. By the end of camp, everyone has learned something new about the issues of their peers, and some even take steps to live a cruelty-free life once they leave camp. That, in addition to the vegan camp food, really makes YEA not only the perfect place for budding philanthropists, but for helping shape the future generations of our compassionate world.

A typical day of food at YEA camp looks like this:

Breakfast: French toast or pancakes, with cereal, soy milk, and fruit.

Lunch: veggie burgers, burritos, and sloppy Joes.

Dinner: pizza, pasta, vegan sushi, and a veggie tofu curry.

Dessert: brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and s’mores.

ALL VEGAN. You know I had to leave you with the goods.

These kids not only learn how to better care for the world and solve its problems, but, most importantly, they develop sense of community with their peers who are doing the same. And Nora, if you ever decide to start an adult YEA camp, sign me up!

You can find more info about YEA and their ongoing summer camps online. This year, there are sessions in Oregon, California, and Massachusetts; the California session began on Sunday, and Massachusetts’s begins August 9. If you have a young activist on your hands, check this place out, and help them become the leader they were born to be.

One of our favorite parts of getting ready for YEA Camp is reading our campers’ applications. We keep the application process pretty simple, but we do ask each prospective camper why they want to attend, what they care about, and what they hope to accomplish out of being there. Check out just a few of their inspiring comments (below), and invite any 12-17 year olds you know to think about what they might hope to get out of a summer camp designed to help them change the world! Then send them to our 2 minute video and to  www.YEACamp.org.

“It is up for young leaders to truly save the world. I want to learn about more resources that I can use, make friends and connect with each other, and have fun. I want to be able to realize that we as a race, though we have come far, are not nearly at the apex of our development and that it depends on us, this generation to advance the human race for the benefit of everyone else. The two main problems in the world are climate change and racism. Many are denying it, but the movement to literally save the world is growing. Almost all scientists have accepted that global warming is a serious threat, and if we don’t do something about it soon, the world could be very well thrown into chaos. Since it takes almost worldwide cooperation to prevent global warming, a problem that will need to be solved first is racism. How is the Israeli prime minister and the leaders of the Arab League going to even meet? Although we consider ourselves very far ahead in equality, we are far from it.” -JiaHeng, age 14

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