Camp Zoo 2011 was a HUGE success!

• More campers in 2011 than any of the last 5 years of Camp Zoo! Last summer we had 681 campers (it was a good summer!), and this summer we had 828 campers. That’s an 18% increase!
• An entire week of 7th/8th grade camp was filled by campers from Dateland, AZ who received Camp Zoo scholarships. They came as a school group and teachers had created a week long leadership camp based around the kids attending Camp Zoo.
• Dozens of up-close animal encounters and cool behind-the-scenes experiences (including new kinds of experiences – ex. orangutan, sting ray bay) and made possible by the wonderful folks in our Living Collections department.
• First summer with an online training component for camp instructors and specific training for working with children who have special needs (presented by an expert in the field with support from a local organization).
• First year in partnership with Banfield Pet Hospital – each week we had a veterinarian visit and present to a camp group along with a therapy dog that campers were able to interact with. This meant a fun guest speaker and give-aways for the campers and $$$ for the Zoo (because Banfield was a camp sponsor).
• Two pilot program camps for children with special needs … Sense of Wonder Camp for children with visual impairments and Wild Hearts Camp for children with orthopedic impairments. Both were extremely successful, enjoyed by campers, appreciated beyond our expectations by parents, and will hopefully be continued and expanded in summers to come.

Overall, the camp instructors and camp supervisor, Dean W, along with many others from around the zoo, made Camp Zoo 2011 our most successful year yet!

And a few more notes on our Sense of Wonder and Wild Hearts camps…. We learned so much in offering these camps for the first time as part of Camp Zoo. We strongly believe everything we learned will help us grow these programs into a successful camp program offering in future years.

No, we’re not breaking protocol by ignoring the “loose” animal … it’s just a realistic bronze statue!

Special thanks to Bert Castro (our CEO) for loaning out the bronze desert tortoise replica that has taken up temporary residence on his desk.

Along with stuffed animals and other biofacts it was great to watch campers with visual impairments explore all of the tortoise statue with their hands in order to create their own image of the whole animal before getting to touch the real tortoise on the shell. This picture made us all laugh because it looks like the metal tortoise is feeling a bit abandoned and left out of the party once we had moved onto touching the real deal, Flippy, the desert tortoise.

We were prepared to offer an amazing experience to campers – one that would be equally rewarding in that “feel good” way for instructors facilitating the program.

Sense of Wonder Camp participants and instructors having a fun day at camp!

However, we were still ridiculously surprised at how awesome of anexperience this was for us as zoo staff and as a way for us to act as a resource for the community. The outpouring of thanks and smiles was a true tear-jerker. In fact, we couldn’t have asked for a better end to the two camps than this … Every day during the summer we ended our days with a camp rally – a time to get everyone together and celebrate the fun things we did and learned that day. This was the same for Sense of Wonder and Wild Hearts Camps and the last person to share their favorite thing about camp on our very last day of camp was Payson’s mom (they are pictured below). She said, “I got to spend the day with a group of people who obviously care deeply about our children and who worked hard to give them a very special experience that I know both my son and I will never forget.”

Payson and his mom are all smiles after meeting Makope and Miguu and watching them walk out of the barn into the exhibit

All the work, all the challenges, all the sweat, all the difficult situations that naturally arise during camp … ALL worth it just to hear that. We are so proud of what became of Camp Zoo 2011, now we’re taking that momentum and preparing for Winter Camp 2011and Camp Zoo 2012! See you here!

Instructor Tiffany R helps Kelsey feel a skull replica. Campers with visual impairments learned about animals by exploring biofacts using their sense of touch, smell, hearing, and, of course, their sense of wonder!

Elephant manager, Heather W, helps Malia, who is blind, use her hands to feel the toenails on Sheena’s foot