[Music] Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota.

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Hello again everyone.

I'm Ray Gildow, and you're watching Lakeland Currents, where today we're going to talk about an interesting camp that's been in the Brainerd area now for 51 or 52 years, Camp Confidence.

And it's a camp that I have been involved with a number of times over the years.

Does a lot of good for a lot of people, and my guests today are Sarah Smith and Mary Harder.

And Sarah let's start with you.

What is your role at Camp Confidence and how long have you been there?

Oh, boy.

So I have been with camp for 13 years in my role as a marketing and event director.

So I get the privilege of putting on events and doing community relations and doing a lot of the fundraising for the programs out at camp.

And Mary, how about you?

I am the camp director.

I've been there for 40 years and counting.

My job is to just kind of be the hub and make sure everything is, all of our staff and projects and the events, are somewhat coordinated.

So it's fun.

You know I think sometimes Camp Confidence is known for people who have families that have candidates for campers to be able to go there, and a lot of people who aren't involved with that maybe don't even know where it's at.

It's like Lakeland Public TV studio here, if you don't get involved with the TV program, you have no idea where the studio is, and we've been here for I don't know how long.

Right.

So, how wide a range are your clients coming from, and what is it that Camp Confidence does?

Yeah, so a little bit about who we are.

It's interesting that you say how people don't even know we're here, and I've lived in the Brainerd lakes area for about 17 years, and just, I didn't know what it was either, if you don't pay attention and if you don't understand, you just don't know.

So we are an outdoor education experience for people of all ages with cognitive and developmental disabilities.

We are located on Sylvan Lake.

We have over 140 acres of things for people to come and do.

We're very blessed because we're open year round, and we get to have those abilities of having all those outdoor experiences that people might not generally get to do.

We're entering, we're just over 53 years.

We're going to be 54 years old here in April.

But what that might look like is a group home might come and visit us and then we plan the activities for them to do.

Or it could be a family unit.

So you've got five people in the family, but one person might have a cognitive disability.

We want that whole group to come to experience it because what's going to happen is they're going to learn just as much from the one individual who might have a cognitive disability and vice versa.

They're going to learn, and they're going to be more a cohesive group once they leave our facility, and that's, you know, really attributed to our programming.

We call our program the heart and the soul of what we do, and Mary really kind of tested that after seeing it for 40 years and maybe even share a couple of the stories of the impact.

I know a lot of the stories that I get to share, see, I don't get to see them as often as Mary, but they really do give you chills and a better understanding of the impact on lives that we make.

How many campers can you handle at a given time?

For day camps during the month of May, we have a lot of school groups that come on in for their year-end field trips, and we usually schedule right around 100 people per day, Monday through Friday.

Actual staying overnight for families, group homes, community-based organizations that come on out and utilize our facility, we have around right around 100-110 beds.

So we have the full package there.

They're housekeeping cabins, totally equipped with all the pots, pans, dishes, microwaves, fireplaces, fire pits outside and so it's where people bring their own sleeping bags, their own food, their own 24-hour staff.

Those are all familiar things.

Then when they come on in, get settled in then we couple that particular dynamic with one of our staff that would best pull out, draw out, people's abilities and giving them their choice.

What do you want to do while you're here?

Instead of being told what they're going to be doing while they're at camp, we lay out just a whole bunch of different activities and they get to pick and choose, as a unit, what they do and when they do it.

I was just telling you, before we went on live, that I was in the Army Reserve unit here in Brainerd when we started clearing this lot for Dick Andres.

Yes.

And we didn't really understand what it was that he was doing, but it was a beautiful spot on Sylvan Lake.

Yeah.

It turns out to be Camp Confidence, and, it was just, we were out there with chainsaws and we had heavy equipment and we're making the area, and I think that the thing I still like about the camp is that you've kept the rest of the area in really natural condition, which is really nice to see.

I know one of the things you wanted to talk about was: what's been happening since COVID?

How you've bounced back.

Because, COVID, it's affected everybody, obviously.

It has.

Prior to COVID hitting, we had between, hovering right around, 10,000 camper days.

Meaning, each day an individual is there, we count that as one camper day.

During the high point of COVID, we were down to less than 3,000 for the entire year.

It was more like, yeah, less than 3,000.

Everybody figured that it would take 3 to 5 years to get back to where you were going, right to where you were pre-COVID.

This year, we will finish up, I was calculating it out the other day, and we should finish up between 13,000 and 14,000 camper days.

Is that the highest you've ever had?

That will be the highest we've ever had.

Wow.

With that said, during that time we have realized how much people love us.

How much it is needed to be able to have a place called home, a place called your own, to come to instead of being, you know, quarantined in your cabin.

We know some organizations that quarantined their clients in their group homes the entire time.

They didn't come out to the yard or anything.

Oh, wow.

We've had groups, Careco, that came from the metro area, they ended up having to sign papers saying, "No we will not let people out of our van.

We will have a bucket in the van, if somebody needs to go to the bathroom," just so we can go to camp.

Once we're there, we're good.

We started programming outdoors more and giving that six foot personal space, yet people were able to come outside and breathe again, have some kind of a normalcy.

And what we forget is how important it is from the time that some people leave, a lot of people leave camp or Confidence Learning Center, we're actually talking about the Camp Confidence program for our persons of with cognitive and physical disabilities but more so their abilities, but how important it is, they'll start talking about camp from the moment they leave.

And, if they go through a staff change, you better believe they're going to let their new staff know that they're going to camp, and they have the dates and everything that they're coming.

So, it's a very important thing.

We have increased our programs to give people what they need.

We have added, well in the last several years, well it's probably been 15 years maybe, we added what's called the "People First, Disability Second" program, and that's our school groups, where we actually go into the Brainerd Lake Schools, and we go into Harrison School, Lowell School, Baxter School, and Riverside School, kindergarten through fourth grade.

And, this year alone, we have already served over 1,277 students in the Brainerd Lakes area and each one has about a 3-day period with our staff, learning about people's abilities and capabilities versus their total disability.

So, it's a different focus?

It's a different focus.

It's getting the message out there.

We're only charging 50 dollars per classroom.

So that's something, if somebody wants to help the schools out and donate towards that 50 dollars a person, or a classroom.

Boy, that would be a good way to get involved with making a huge impact.

What we've heard back from teachers and parents and students is, by bringing us in, they have a lot kinder student body.

They have a more understanding student body.

Better awareness?

Yes, and then another one that is a new program, and Sarah can expand on this a bit, but it is the "Building Confidence in Employment Skills" program, where we have hired on somebody to develop and lead that, and it's a huge program and only room for upward expansion.

You say 13,000 people this past year.

How many staff members do you have out there and how many volunteers, typically?

Well, with that said, we have currently 3 program leaders, as well as myself, that is in program and we are in the process of hiring one more program leader to jump in.

During the month of May, we bring in 2 to 5 more people to start the beginning of May, beginning of June, and take us through September or October.

And those are our program staff.

With that said, if somebody calls in sick, we have several of our staff members are in maintenance, in fundraising, in marketing, that will readily jump in and take over an activity area, because we've in-serviced them on it.

It also helps them once again see the heart and soul of camp and be a part of that.

Where do your campers come from?

They come from all over the state of Minnesota.

There is a high concentrate in the the metro area.

Yet more and more, especially during COVID, are user groups and families in the Brainerd Lakes and surrounding areas.

Brainerd Lakes all the way over to Staples, Wadena, Little Falls, have been coming on in.

So, we've seen a massive growth in the locals using us.

What do you have for facilities?

What's going on out there?

I know you got places where people can sleep.

What else do you have?

Yeah, it's beyond our cabins.

We have, you know, our main Lodge when you pull in is our Mariucci Lodge, which was named after John Mariucci, hockey legend, who really spearheaded the fundraising for that main building.

That's where we house all of our staff, all of our offices, administration.

We have a great room in there that we use.

But, beyond that, we have got, you know, our animal sanctuary, our beach area.

We've also got our zip line and our Confidence Course.

So really it is a whole array of just, we utilize as much of our acreage as we can beyond the cabins.

And really the goal is that we're only in the cabin to sleep a little bit and to bond, but really to utilize, you know, make sure in the summer time going out on the boats or our glass bottom boat or, in the winter, going out ice fishing or broom ball or going down our tubing hill, really experiencing something we're not going to experience day to day.

You know, and then inclement weather happens in Minnesota, a lot, so we do have in our Mariucci Lodge a crafting room in the basement and our astronomy room in the basement.

I stand corrected.

So, there's always a place to go and things to do.

I mean really utilizing our facilities to its fullest capacity.

Even if a group visits us for three days, they wouldn't hit it all, you know.

They'd have to come back.

How about your animal shelter or what is that?

Well, we have two of them actually.

So, we have one indoor, where our Nature Center, where we have aquariums with fish and a turtle and our tortoise and our snake and it's really, it's a hands-on room.

It's got just really go in and be hands-on with all of the activities inside.

But then outdoor, we also have it's about an acre of our Animal Sanctuary outside where we house, we've got deer and bunnies and geese and again it's all about the hands-on and the feeding, right down from the feeding to the petting and all of that.

Soon to get a miniature cow, I think.

A what?

A miniature cow.

Oh really?

It's always changing in there.

I can't keep up sometimes.

A miniature cow.

I've never heard of.

So, to capitalize on that, we do a lot in camp using our five senses.

Everything, we believe that, and know, that everything that you learn in life, you learn through your five senses and so we use our eyes, ears, nose, touch, a little bit of taste to explore the world around us in a safe environment and with that said, we also have programs such as our Endeavors Program which is a very, that was a spawn of COVID also.

That's a small group of the 15 people per one of our staff to take them out and explore the environment mainly.

Nature hikes, what you find you're learning about life sciences.

We're getting very heavy on the life sciences program in a fun way.

We also have our rendezvous, which can be a large group setting with different activities.

It's a themed program and that was, that one's usually the second Thursday of each month.

There's also the new, so let me get into, there's we also host different programs.

There's Camp Sertoma of the Great Plains that we host.

We provide the facility and a lot of the staffing.

They also provide their own staff.

Then we also have Proof Alliance and that's working with individuals and families that are on the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum.

There's also Fishing Has No Boundaries - Brainerd Lakes Chapter, one of the largest chapters in the nation and, once again, we host that.

It is not our event but we host in very integral partnerships with all those programs.

How long does the average camper stay?

2 nights, 3 And then is there a waiting list, like in July and August?

Yes.

Sometimes.

We try to give people top priority.

Most groups do have it on their docket to reschedule just about the same time each year which makes it easy.

With that said, there's always new groups or shuffling around and we try to give people priority yet we have other options.

Okay, so have you guys ever been on Lakeland Public TV before?

It's been a very long time but yes, we have.

So, Sarah how do you get the information out about what you do?

Right.

Who you are?

So, you know, it's always a challenge.

The Brainerd Lakes area is so good to all the non-profits in the area.

So, we do a lot of, one thing I do want to mention is that our funding.

We do not receive any tax aid at any level and so we do our fundraising really comes from events, which I'll get into here in a moment, and through private donors, and then through charitable gambling as well.

So, really using our events almost as a springboard to get our message out that's one way, you know, we have a lot of, we have a very good partnership with the Brainerd JC's Ice Fishing Extravaganza which is coming up in January which is a great way to really get our message out.

We've been blessed to be a, you know, a primary recipient of that event and to really partner with them since day one, in their 31 years.

So, events like that, we have the Gull Lake Frozen Four coming up where we partner around Gull Lake as well and then.

What's it called?

The Frozen Four?

So the Gull Lake Frozen Four is a culmination of businesses around the Gull Lake and so it's about nine stops or people can go from stop, to stop, to stop like a pub crawl, but we've really turned it into a 3-day event.

So, on Friday, the 20th, people make a crawl like that?

Well, I'm just saying that's exactly it.

So, and we put a big tent out on in Hole in the Day Bay and so Friday we kick it off with our Frozen Flop, which is our version of a Polar Plunge, and we jump into the lake and we do the fundraising that way.

And again, it's another way to really jump into, spread our message of what we do.

And that's a fundraiser?

It is a fundraiser.

Wait a second, we is Yeah, well.

This Year.

And then we have the Frozen Four on Saturday and then Sunday we wrap it up with the Food Fest and that's all out on Hole in the Day Bay and a big tent and, so really using these events.

Ray, you're very familiar with our Camp Classic, which was our flagship really of our events, which is a golf and fishing event that is always the third weekend in June.

And what that really does is that brings the business community in really for the golf, but the fishing community is so amazing and you can't be modest on this because you did help start 40 years ago the Camp Fishing Classic and just having those partnerships and the relationships through different areas of the community.

So, we have the fishing world.

We have the business world.

We've got the restaurant world.

We've got the school programming.

And we always feel at Camp that, especially on the fundraising side of it, it is a two-way street.

Where, thank you to the community and everybody who helps us with these events, but what can we give back in return, and we're very genuine in that.

I mean, relationships is what has really built this organization for over 50 years and just keeping sharing that and building new relationships, while enhancing our current relationships, is really how we get our message out there.

And, you know, the churches have been great in the area too.

Whenever I get to go and speak, a lot of times I'll bring brochures of our organization and I the first thing I say is, "there's a brochure for everyone here, and please don't keep it."

We want you to think about who's in your neighborhood, who is in your community, who do you work with, who might be in your parish that you can give this to that could utilize our facilities and so it's a really good way just to just to keep talking.

I mean, you told us we only have like 27 minutes and we kind of warned you we could go on and on and on.

We're very passionate about what we do.

The stories about a family coming in to Camp and going the dad saying, "well he can't do that," and we just kind of look back and say well, "we don't use the word can't here," and step back for a second.

Just watch.

Just watch and watching how the parents can learn from their child or how the group home leader learns from their clients and it just makes people do a 180 going look at these abilities and you know what we're more alike than what you give credit for.

And the mission that we serve and what we do out at Camp, I mean it's instilled in us and, if we could just, if we can really invite people to come and see us and just give us a little bit of time, whether it's through volunteering or bringing someone out there, it will be instilled in the public very quickly as well.

We share a lot of laughter.

We share a lot of tears of joy.

We also share equally a lot of aha moments, that we start seeing people's abilities versus their disability, that may be a challenge.

And we work with people from say two months old which is a very progressive family that says, "We're scared.

We want to know what our future holds."

And they come on out and they go for a pontoon ride or they go into the wildlife sanctuary or the rest of the family is climbing Martin's Mountain or something like that and what does the child benefit of that?

A more relaxed parent.

It's huge.

So, with that, what we haven't talked about is what it costs Camp.

It costs Camp somewhere it roughly around 75 dollars per person, per day, to be at Confidence Learning Center.

For a group, we only charge, an individual that's staying a full 24 hours, we only charge them $24 per person.

A family of up to five, we only charge them $50 for the entire family.

Wow!

For that time period.

We give them a price break.

Pretty reasonable.

Yes.

So, that still leaves us somewhere around 50 dollars per person, per camper day, that we go out in the community.

Sarah gets fundraisers going.

We all support that, but she is the heart and soul that gets that going as well as partnering with, like she said, the JC's, the Lions, the Eagles, Sertoma, Brainerd Sertoma.

Camp goes out and volunteers.

Camp staff and volunteers that go and check every single light bulb in that Sertoma Winter Wonderland display and we fix them, we repair them, help transport them over with the help of men from Adult Teen Challenge, help to transport them over to the Arboretum.

So, the partnerships go on and on.

It's incredible.

Mike Burning with APEC took our pontoons this year with his team and they're totally rebuilding two of our pontoons for us in their facility.

So, it's huge.

Do you have any idea how long the persons that's been coming back has been there?

There are still some people that are coming still, this coming summer, that were there when I first started back in 1882.

1882?

Yeah, 1882.

1782!

That's incredible.

40 years!

That's really incredible!

So, it says a lot about the quality of what's going on.

Yes.

Do you have any other camps that are competing with what you do in Minnesota?

I wouldn't say competing.

There's similar.

We all, there are several camps, Camp Courage, Camp Friendship, that run huge programs also.

Each one of us has our own niche.

Well, that's nice.

Each of us has our own niche and we like to keep it that way.

So, if people want to make contributions, what do they do?

Well, there's multiple ways.

They can certainly call us 218-828-2344 or the easiest way it is to follow us on Facebook or to go to our website which is confidencelearningcenter.org.

confidencelearningcenter.org.

And do you have, we got about a minute left here, do you have winter activities or is this mostly warm weather activities?

No, we are open year round.

Okay.

We are open year round.

So, yes and on top of that, we also have a huge volunteer program.

If you want to get involved, we have something for everybody.

We really do.

So, give us a call.

Great.

Some of the funnest, you know what I really like in the winter, is sometimes the sled dogs will come out.

But in February we also host Region Five Winter Olympics which is a non-competitive winter day of sports which includes, if you can think of a winter activity we're doing it out there with the tubing, the ice machine, the sled dogs, the broomball.

So, there's always something to do out there.

Merrifield Marathoners come on in and give rides.

Maury Duvall comes in with two to three teams of sled dogs.

There's also the Sherp rides added last year and the list goes on and on in numerous schools that come in and do the facilitation.

Well Sarah and Mary, thank you for jumping on board with us.

You obviously are people who care about what you're doing and you have a passion for that.

It's great to see.

And, again, if they want to get in touch with you, one way for sure is to go to your website.

Yep, go to our website.

Thank you very much.

You've been watching Lakeland Currents.

I'm Ray Gildow.

So long until next time.