With the rise of deep and painful divisions in our country’s political landscape, many are talking about the importance of building community to preserve mental well-being and combat isolation. We are seeing more and more instances of estrangement, exclusion, and control. People are experiencing fear, hate, and dehumanization.
Strong, inclusive communities serve to foster equality, mutual care, solidarity, mutual respect, and freedom. These spaces are often based on values of empathy, compassion, and shared responsibility for one another’s well-being. This is not unlike my summer camp’s values of: responsibility, integrity, friendship, leadership, tradition, and community.
I spent 11 summers of my youth, in the Blue Ridge mountains of Brevard, North Carolina at Keystone Camp. Before I was a social worker, sleepaway camp was a foundational place where I practiced the value of community as a camper for 8 years, and then a counselor for 3. Below are some of the key takeaways I learned at camp in order to build community:
Many Hands Make Light Work
What do setting the camp dining room, tying the canoes on the trailer, sweeping the gym, and picking up tennis balls all have in common? All of these activities get done a lot faster with 8 campers, than it does with 2. When everybody pitches in, (and you get to sing a group rendition of Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb”), the mundane becomes much more fun and much less of a chore.
“Other Girl First”
This mantra was a reminder to build a community where you are being considerate of others by putting “the other girl first.” Somebody will ultimately be responsible for getting more lettuce for the salad bar, and so refilling the lettuce before it gets down to the last few leaves is a way you can put the Other Girl First, who will naturally want to have a full salad bowl. By making choices that are considerate of others, you are ultimately making choices to build a community that’s considerate of you.
Job Wheels
A healthy community encourages collective action and mutual support. For cabin cleanup each day, each cabinmate (counselors included) would take turns completing a cleaning task for inspection. That means that at some point, everybody was going to have to do the job of cleaning the toilets. And in turn, at some point, everybody gets the luxury of the 30-second task involved in emptying the trash cans.
Taking Turns in Rotation
For each meal, the table that would eat first was rotated, which in turn rotated the table that would get food last. In this way, no matter who you were or how old you were, you had to learn the value of patience, making conversation when you’re hungry, and distributing fairness (note: singing songs to other tables is the best way to pass time while waiting for your turn).
No PDs in the KC
AKA No Put Downs in the Keystone Camp. This saying prioritized the value of mutual respect to not put down others but rather to emphasize lifting each other. We are a stronger community when each member is respected and celebrated.
Whole Community Sharing
Every week, we would have a camp-wide campfire where we would sit through and applaud the long lists of each camper who had made successes in their activities during the week. It was also tradition for each cabin to share a Kamp Key log update about what happened in their cabin that week so everybody at camp knew what each other was up to and which cabins were being terrorized by wolf spiders. Sharing is a beautiful way to increase community.
We Can All Be Leaders
“Leaders ask ‘how can I help?’ ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ We can all be leaders.” At camp, leadership wasn’t only reserved for counselors or campers in the leadership program. Everyone had an opportunity to be a leader by being a part of the community.
There’s a Margaret Meade quote that says “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” During this time in our country, many people are looking for elected officials and others to step up and be leaders, but we can all be leaders in our lives, families, and communities.
PLAY, Choose Your Attitude, Make Their Day
While currently many people in power seem to have the intent to divide and sew negativity and hopelessness, joy is resistance. At camp, it was not uncommon to be tasked with creating fun during a thunderstorm or scary campout. One of my favorite camp memories was a canoe trip down the French Broad River when we got caught in a thunderstorm. I remember having so much fun singing songs with my fellow campers while navigating the rainy rapids. Even in the storm, you can choose your attitude.
Mix and Mingle
While those currently in power have an interest in isolating individuals and manipulating them into a sense of fear or distrust toward others, strong communities help to build bonds of trust and cooperation. Human connections are a powerful form of resistance. Everything at camp, every SINGLE thing, was designed to make new connections. At some camps, you spend every day of the session in every activity with your 5-7 other cabinmates and no one else.
This is not the case at Keystone. Every activity, team game event, meal, out of camp trip, and dance, was about mixing people from different backgrounds, cities, and states to get to know new people. When people come together across differences, they become more resilient to manipulation and fear-mongering.
Female Empowerment
Some all-girls camps will hire male counselors to teach certain activities, but not at Keystone. At Keystone, campers learn “new skills from other women. Our trip leaders are women. We get to be ourselves, to be who we want to be. We share a community and a culture of support, encouragement, and strength. We want our girls to know that there is no limit on what they can achieve.” All activities are female-led to show the power and strength of women.
In spite of an unhealthy top-down hierarchical power structure, communities can empower individuals through grassroots organizing, shared responsibility, and collaboration. Marginalized populations have always found a way to create care communities for each other in times of political terror.
Whether it was during pre-Roe v. Wade times with the Jane Collective who ran underground abortion networks, Black communities of civil rights activists, like Audre Lorde, who created the first real communities of care with self care in the name of “We don’t just deserve to be alive, we have the right to live our best lives,” or the LGBTQ community during the AIDS epidemic, who would famously bury their friends in the morning, protest in the afternoon, and dance all night.
These are the blueprints we should be learning from during this time. And take it from me, when you’re in the lifeboats out at sea, signing at the top of your lungs is healing for the soul.
