Funded by Benevia Trust (March 2025)
Financial Aid Bank for Survival Rockport Camp
Survival Rockport is a highly popular, small summer day camp. It
takes place on public wild lands in the Rockport forest and on a
public beach. We travel everywhere by foot, carrying all our
supplies. Our 20 campers per week form a community and immerse
weekly in a different story of survival. Sometimes we are
stranded mariners or treasure hunters, sometimes we are field
biologists camping out to study rare species. Campers forge
connections with each other and the natural world, establish a
home base camp, and then hone their survival skills.
There are 8 core skills with five levels each. Campers decide
which ones to focus on, and they demonstrate their skills when
they're ready to move up. The skills include firecraft,
shelter architect, naturalist, navigator, and rope wrangler,
among others. Our instructors are adults who are skilled in
naturalist and/or wilderness travel and survival. Our campers
are given trust, self direction, and hours per day for
unfettered exploration, construction of shelters, drawing of
wildlife, and solving of mysteries. Though the stories we create
each week are fictional, the camp is authentic in that
experiences are based on the surrounding wildlife and plants and
spontaneous events in nature.
Campers finish this camp ready to guide their own families on
adventures, and we often hear back that they are entrusted with
the fires or other aspects of family camping trips.
Kestrel believes strongly that no one should be kept from having
a high quality summer adventure due to lack of funds. We keep
the camp fees reasonable and lower than other private camps. We
also offer a simple application for fee waivers and reductions,
and we've never turned anyone away for inability to pay. We
believe anyone who tells us they need help, and so far, to our
knowledge, our trust has been well spent.
However, we no longer have a financial aid bank. We want to
establish one, and have families who can chip in a little extra
replenish it each year.