What we believe:

We believe that too many young people, especially those between the ages of 9 and 15 who are economically disadvantaged, fall between the cracks in Chicago's educational system. These students can benefit enormously from the same types of educational, cultural, and community-building opportunities that are more readily afforded to young people from more privileged situations.

We also believe in the power of consistency and continuity. We therefore offer a summer camp and regularly scheduled school-year activities. This combination allows us to provide a sustained synthesis of academic, cultural, environmental, civic, and recreational experiences. In short, our year-round operation helps to nurture well-rounded, complete individuals, capable of dealing with the curves life is sure to throw their way.

What we do:

During the school-year, Camp of Dreams operates Community Days, which take place two Saturdays a month from 1:00-4:00 pm, at LEARN Charter School, 1132 S. Homan, in North Lawndale. Community Days give Dreamers the opportunity to participate in educational, artistic, and recreational activities with old friends and new friends. Camp of Dreams also runs leadership retreats for smaller groups of participants.
Over the summer, Camp of Dreams runs a three-week overnight camp in Oregon, Illinois, at the Lutheran Outdoor Ministries Center. The LOMC is a beautiful, heavily wooded, 650 acre campus equipped with cabins, platform tents, lake, challenge courses, and trails—perfect for providing Dreamers with a safe and challenging home for three weeks in July.

If you have any questions about attending or volunteering with any of these programs, please contact us at 312.649.5551 or info@campofdreams.org.

What we aim for:

Camp of Dreams aims at two related but distinct sets of outcomes. The first has tangible and measurable targets: improved grades, improved behavior, increased extra-curricular participation, high school graduation, and enrollment in college. The second includes less tangible, deeper accomplishments: the development of a robust and healthy sense of accountability to oneself and one's community.

Personnel:

The Camp of Dreams staff brings a range of qualifications and perspectives to its programs: the summer staff includes a diverse mix of teachers, artists, professionals and college students, and the school-year staff adds university and high school student volunteers to this combination. The administrative staff of Camp of Dreams has been with the project since its inception, as a pilot, in February of 2003, and much of the original staff remains involved.

The Camp of Dreams explicitly strives - in its hiring and board selection practices - to assemble ethnically and socio-economically diverse leadership teams.

Executive Director: Adam Davis is the lead facilitator and coordinator of Justice Talking, a social-justice oriented seminar series for several Chicago-area AmeriCorps organizations; an instructor in the Odyssey Project in the Humanities, a college level course which teaches the humanities to adults living in poverty; the Executive Director of Camp of Dreams, a non-profit organization providing year-round programming for underserved 9-14 year olds in Chicago; an Associate Director of the Project on Civic Reflection; and a lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is the co-editor of The Civically Engaged Reader (2006), and he has spent several years as a backcountry trail crew leader for the United States Forest Service. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2003), his M.A. from Boston College (1996), and his B.A. from Kenyon College (1993).

Director of Operations: Lori Coomes joined Camp of Dreams for the 2004 summer camp, where she directed the Athletics Program and helped campers and staff out with everything else as well. Throughout the 2004-2005 school-year, Lori taught math and writing, and during the 2005 summer program, she led workshops in Mythology, Basketball, and Entrepreneurship, and she filled in wherever help was needed. Before becoming the Director of Operations at Camp of Dreams, Lori taught for four years in the Chicago Public Schools at Dvorak Specialty Academy and Ella Flagg Young Elementary School. She also served as the assistant program coordinator for the Metro Achievement Center and coached soccer and basketball at the middle school level. Lori received her B.S. in Elementary Education from the University of New England.

History

Camp of Dreams was first conceived in February of 2003. That summer and during the summer of 2004, Camp of Dreams ran a residential camp at the Wild Rose Program Center, in St. Charles, IL. Camp of Dreams followed both summer sessions with twice-monthly gatherings at LEARN Charter School in North Lawndale. Since starting its school-year program, Camp of Dreams has offered classes in academics, arts, and mind and body; provided after-school tutoring; and engaged participants in a community service program.

From February of 2003 through August of 2004, Camp of Dreams operated as a pilot project of a parent organization. By the fall of 2004, it was clear - both because of the program's merits and because of relationships with and commitments to participants and their families - that the program should continue as its own, independent non-profit organization. In late October of 2004, Camp of Dreams received 501(c)(3) status, and it has been improving and increasing it services ever since.