The first session of HFH Summer Camps 2019 begins on June 28, but camper recruitment efforts are already underway for the summer, when hundreds of New York City kids will enjoy a free sleepaway camp experience.

Paola Rodriguez, Camp Registrar for HFH Summer Camps, is responsible for coordinating the team of Camp Recruiters that help families to navigate every aspect of camp attendance, from ensuring that families meet application deadlines to accompanying campers on their way to and from Camps Lanowa and Wakonda in Harriman State Park.

“We start in February because that’s when we have our Provider Breakfast,” says Rodriguez, referring to the annual HFH Camps Provider Breakfast, when shelter providers from throughout New York City gather to learn more about the 2019 application process. “And then, after that, we just start setting up information sessions, calling all the sites that we have on our database.”

Camp Recruiters travel to homeless shelters throughout New York City, where they present on the camps experience to families and staff. These information sessions are critical to spreading the word and building excitement about HFH Summer Camps.

Most children participating in HFH Summer Camps have never had a sleepaway camp experience before, and these information sessions are also a chance for Camp Recruiters to answer any questions and assuage parents’ concerns.

Rodriguez has worked in camper recruitment for four years, and over this time, she has learned to address parents’ common concerns while bringing attention to the unique features of an HFH Summer Camps experience. For example, the opportunity for kids to interact with international staff.

“One of the things that I love about our camps is the fact that they have diverse staff,” she says. “Whether it’s their accent or what they like to eat, they just bring a different aspect to the camp and it’s nice to see all the different people and the relationships they build.”

Part of Rodriguez’s appreciation for the staff’s diverse backgrounds stems from her own international experience as a teenager. At 17, she spent two weeks at an international school in Senegal through a school program. She credits the experience with sparking her interest in education and youth outreach.

“Something that I saw there was that there was a lot of poverty, and when I came back, my whole life kind of changed,” she says of the trip. “I felt more grateful for the things that I have and that I didn’t even think about prior to the trip. So, it was kind of an awakening experience.”

Shortly thereafter, Rodriguez applied for a Camp Counselor position with HFH Summer Camps. She was asked to consider a Camp Recruiter position instead due to her bilingualism and strong interpersonal skills.

“I had first applied as a Counselor because I didn’t get that experience as a child,” she says. “I interviewed over the phone and she told me that I would be perfect as a camp recruiter.”

Rodriguez was promoted to the role of Camp Registrar after three years working as a Camp Recruiter and one year working as a Senior Camp Recruiter. She also spent one year working as an Afterschool Teacher at Prospect Family Residence.

All children participating in HFH Summer Camps are experiencing or have previously experienced homelessness, which Rodriguez notes can add unique challenges to the application process. Camp Recruiters are responsible for ensuring that these complexities don’t interfere with a child’s participation in HFH Summer Camps.

“It takes them away from the complicated situation they’re in,” Rodriguez explains. “That experience takes a toll on the children and as adults, we might not notice that, but it really does. Their whole lives, they’ll always remember the time that they went to camp, seeing all the animals, swimming in the lake, and talking to their friends.”

Over the course of her four years working in camper recruitment, Rodriguez has also learned to address parents’ individual concerns with patience and a personalized touch.

“I try to make the parents feel as comfortable as possible and when I speak to them it’s like we’re having a conversation one on one,” she says. “As parents, they’re concerned about their children, so I try to talk to them as much as I can about safety and how we’re going to take care of their children.”

In addition to her role as Camp Registrar, Rodriguez was recently accepted into Hunter College, where she plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree in women’s and gender studies. She has already received her associate degree in education from Bronx Community College.

“In this organization, I was able to grow and learn things that I didn’t know throughout the four years that I’ve been working here,” Rodriguez says, noting that she began working for HFH Summer Camps while transitioning from high school into her first semester in college.

In the future, Rodriguez intends to continue working in education and youth outreach.

“I definitely want to be in a school environment, whether as a parent coordinator or a counselor. Somewhere where I can interact with kids daily,” she says. “If I get to help kids no matter what, that’s my big thing.”

In the context of HFH Summer Camps, Rodriguez notes that participation not only enriches kids’ summer vacation, but also acts as a springboard for connecting their families with the services and programs available to them. One of her most memorable moments as a Camp Recruiter came when she helped to facilitate a family’s access to health insurance, which is a prerequisite for participation in HFH Summer Camps.

“There was this one time where I had a kid who really wanted to attend camp, but he didn’t have insurance,” she recalls of the child, whose family had not yet applied for the health insurance program for which they qualified. “I connected them with the correct people and it got done. He was able to go to session three.”

Rodriguez’s experience with the child’s family exemplifies the personalized and proactive approach to problem-solving she has applied throughout her four years working in camp recruitment.

“What motivates me are their faces when I take them to camp and when I bring them back,” she says. “Fifteen years later they can say that they went to camp, and even if they don’t remember me, I feel like I played a part in that.”

“I always had some aspiration to give back to my community,” explained Georgeann Gigi, known by most of her coworkers as Gigi. In her role as operations associate for HFH Summer Camps, Gigi is doing just that– helping kids around her hometown of New York City have access to a real summer camp experience.

Gigi has a personal connection to the homeless young people she serves. Born and raised in East Harlem, she and her mother experienced homelessness. “It was, I guess, a blessing in disguise,” Gigi explained, “my mom was able to gain her independence for the first time.”

The pair was able to make it out of the system, moving into an apartment that Gigi’s mother lives in to this day. Her mother went on to get her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in education-related fields.

This experience shaped Gigi, encouraging her to work in homeless services. She says, “I knew in some way that I wanted to work within the shelter system, just coming from our experience and having, you know, certain people who guided my mom to get out of the system pretty fast—which can be rare.”

But the road to a job in homeless services was not straightforward. Gigi attended Hunter College, majoring in Political Science and working retail at the same time as she was trying to get her degree. “I wanted to be able to provide for myself,” she explains.

With such a packed schedule during school, she fell into retail full-time after graduation. Then, serendipitously, she met a coworker who had worked in homeless services with Volunteers of America. The coworker invited Gigi to interview for a position at a shelter for single adults. Gigi went for the interview and was hired as a case manager at the facility.

Gigi had never worked as a case manager before, but she adapted quickly. “You can be trained on everything and anything, but I think it’s the experience and being there that you get the knowledge that you need,” she argues.

Her personal skills also helped. “I’m someone who’s super organized and structured myself,” says Gigi, “so case manager was…a good fit for me.”

She describes her current job at HFH as very different from her time as a case manager. Gigi works exclusively with HFH camps, a program that helps provide an authentic summer camp experience to children experiencing homelessness. In her role as operations associate for Camps, she is responsible for managing the recruitment of campers and leading the recruitment team. She manages partnerships with multiple shelter sites to keep them up to date about the camp season, and she works with members of the teen leader program.

With all this on her plate, Gigi keeps busy. But she loves the job. “My favorite thing is definitely feeling like I’m contributing to making an impact in these kids’ lives,” she explains, “While it may seem small—going to a two-week summer camp­­—parents who keep coming back, and there’s a reason why they’re coming back. Their kids have an incredible experience, and it’s an opportunity for the child to just learn.”

“At the end of the day, I can see what I’m doing to contribute to their lives,” she says.

Laura Henrich, director of Camp Lanowa, has been a director with HFH Summer Camps for over 20 years! She is a legend in the camp world and has been instrumental to the success of our Summer Camps program and (of course) always ensures that the kids and staff have the best time at camp.

Laura has been with HFH Summer Camps since the beginning. She served as director of Camp Lanowa when it was run by Pathways for Youth, the organization that operated the site before HFH Summer Camps. In 1989, HFH Summer Camps began running Camp Lanowa in partnership with Pathways, and in 1992, when HFH Summer Camps became the sole operator of the site, Laura stayed on as director. She has been with HFH Summer Camps ever since.

Her camp career began in 1977 at Camp Oh-Neh-Tah, where she was a counselor. Laura’s favorite thing to do at camp is outdoor cooking—preparing food over a wood fire. She loves having the opportunity to teach campers things they could never learn in the city, like how to make a cake inside an orange! During the school year, when she’s not busy searching out the next great set of HFH Summer Camp counselors, Laura serves as Athletics Director of The Churchill School, a private K-12 school in Manhattan.