Deerkill Day Camp Gives Back to Community with New Program

Jersey City, NJ, February 08, 2018 --(PR.com)-- One of the oldest family-run day camps in Rockland County is celebrating its 60th year with the launch of their “Deerkill Cares” program. The initiative was built upon one of the camp’s core values; to ensure everyone, both staff and campers, look for ways to give back to the community.

As part of the program, Deerkill will continue to provide full scholarships to up to twenty campers in need each summer. These children come to Deerkill through organizations like National Council for Jewish Women, Big Brothers Big Sister and Focus for A Future. Deerkill’s 15- year-old campers, called STARs (Service-Training-Adventure-Responsibility), will visit a senior center, clean and paint trash cans as part of Keep Rockland Beautiful, and help prepare meals for Healing Meals with the Health Barn each summer. The camp created an annual fundraiser for Experience Camps, an organization that provides one-week camp scholarships to children who have experienced a loss of a loved one. Deerkill has raised enough funds to send 4 campers to Experience Camps over the last two years by selling bracelets and headbands that say "Deerkill Strong.”

Camp Director Rebecca Rothman says it’s important to infuse these lessons into children at a young age. "We want our campers to feel they are not just part of our camp community but to recognize the impact they can have on the larger community surrounding them.”

Executive Director for Experience Camps, Sara Deren, says she feels fortunate for all Deerkill has done. “Through the outreach efforts of Deerkill, we have reached more children who otherwise wouldn't have known about our programs.”

The camp is not just giving back to the community, but to the earth as well, with their “Deerkill Cares” Initiative. Director Todd Rothman says, “The camp has taken several steps towards going green recently but the next few summers will see a big difference in the way we are helping the environment.” The camp will be converting all plastic utensils and plates to biodegradable options and has started distributing re-usable bathing suit bags in lieu of disposable plastic bags. New pool bathrooms with automatic dryers and faucets were added in addition to new insulation added to air-conditioned buildings to optimize energy efficiency. Moving forward, the Rothmans have already committed to converting all of their lighting to LED bulbs and have begun exploring the feasibility of solar panels to help minimize the carbon footprint and hope to install them in the next few years. “It’s an exciting new chapter for our camp family and we can’t wait to see what the next sixty years has in store.”

For more information on Deerkill Cares and Planet Deerkill please visit DeerkillDayCamp.com.