• Operating license

• Emergency Action Plan

• Background and reference checks

• Mandatory Reporter training

• Health Supervisor

• Multiple staff with CPR, AED and First Aid certifications

• Safety and training certifications in high-risk activities such as gun ranges, zip lines, high ropes courses, aquatics, archery, rock climbing walls, horseback riding, ATVs

• Camp Director and staff with multiple years of camp experience

• Intensive counselor training

CHILDREN AND FAMILIES DESERVE BETTER.

MOST STATES DO NOT REQUIRE CAMPS TO ENFORCE HEALTH AND SAFETY PROTECTIONS. IT’S SHOCKING.

Day or overnight/resident camps can offer children opportunities for personal growth. Camps can be a wonderful way for children to unplug from technology and trade 10 months of closed-in classrooms for the great wide open. But when “high-risk” camp activities include shooting live ammunition from semi-automatic rifles, zip-lining over tree canopies, climbing sheer rock walls, throwing tomahawks and jumping into a variety of water environments, we must ensure such activities are supremely safe.

Most states do not require camps to implement health and safety standards that children, families and communities deserve. In fact, based on our intensive research, roughly half of our states do not require any meaningful licensing or oversight at all.

Persistent deaths, injuries and, especially, sexual assaults at camps have not stoked adequate change. In addition to an enduring history of aggressive camp lobby efforts to prevent further oversight, data collection and safety enforcement are woefully inadequate.

Caregivers should ask appropriate questions before they send their precious cargo into the hands of those they largely do not know. And while it is impossible to eliminate accidents, there are myriad means for eliminating preventable harm.

For decades, families have used American Camp Association accreditation as the acceptable standard of care for the camp community. Based on our research and experience, we highly recommend that parents reconsider. ACA standards do not meet the level of care that we believe children and families deserve. In fact, mandatory standards are nominal, accreditation inspections happen infrequently and ACA lobbyists continue to thwart long overdue, meaningful camp safety legislation.

Despite these concerns, Meow Meow Foundation has repeatedly asked that the ACA work with us in raising the bar to protect children. To date, they have refusec to do so.