Initiatives: Our Works in Progress
Unirondack is a social justice organization. With that claim comes a responsibility to listen, reflect, and act.
The following are directions we are hoping to take Unirondack in the next coming years. For many years now we have poured a lot of energy into smashing the patriarchy and dispelling the myth of the gender binary with LGBTQ+ initiatives as the central highlight of our work. Obviously, we won’t take any steps back in this work, but we also believe it’s possible to walk and chew gum as we look to other ways to make camp a reflection of the world we hope to create.
We never claim to be an infallible organization in any of our social justice initiatives and, in fact, consider an aim for perfection to be a largely unproductive effort. We are simply on our path to learn and further educate from our own mistakes and successes as we grow as an organization. We aim to be inclusive. And we fall short a lot. But we’re eager and ready to make changes.
So here are the things on our organization’s mind and some steps we hope to take:
Climate Change
As is the case with many organizations, Unirondack depends greatly on an appreciation of outdoor beauty and the gifts of Mother Earth to build passion for our mission. While we believe that the majority of climate change initiatives are ones that are out of the hands of individuals and rest largely in the control of international corporate industries, we also believe in living the world you want to see. Central to our belief in the interdependent web of existence is facing facts and being real with the effects of climate change that are reconstructing the future of the world as we know it today. Of course, there are certain inevitabilities
to running a business that make it impossible to avoid waste or consumption. But this doesn’t mean we are unable to make an impact. Here are our goals by 2030.
Replace 50% of our incandescent lights with LEDs
Reduce the amount of products bought from WalMart or Amazon by 25%
Reduce our summer printing by 50%
Begin composting
Develop a camper carpooling system
Transition 80% of paper goods to post-consumer products
Transition 50% of our dairy products to Lewis County sourced
If you have ways that you think we can improve, please let us know. These are things we are always thinking about, but it’s easy for things to fall to the wayside when the chaos of a summer begins. Getting our leadership staff trained on the importance of these efforts, reminding our campers, and changing our culture to a more environmentally conscious one are keys to success in these initiatives.
Indigenous Education at Unirondack
An uncomfortable truth: The land Unirondack rests on was stolen from Indigenous (capitalize) people at the hands of European colonizers. While it’s also true that we as individuals or as an organization right now may not have had anything to do with the actions of our ancestors from generations ago (and, in fact, we have Native campers and staff as well) this doesn’t absolve us from action we can take now to address these wrongs.
Unirondack rests on the ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee (hoe-deh-no-SHOW- nee) Confederacy, a collection of six Indigenous tribes who used to live throughout the Adirondacks and still occupy many areas nearby.
Here are some things we are doing to address colonization our space:
Offer as many Unirondack Programs as we can to Native and Indigenous youth and adults free of charge.
Comprehensive Land Acknowledgements for all programs
Signage around camp to highlight camp’s Indigenous history
Camperships to make camp free to Indigenous youth
Anti-colonial Trainings to our staff
Anti-colonial education opportunities for campers
Using culturally inappropriate/appropriative content at camp as an opportunity for conversation and then removing it.
Treating the land we are on in accordance with its Native history, that is with respect and dignity, understanding our role as caretakers and stewards in relationship with the Earth.
Accessibility at Unirondack
If you’ve been to camp in recent years you may have noticed some of the changes we’ve made to make camp more accommodating to those with mobility assistance devices and mobility aids. Canes, scooters, wheelchairs, and walkers haven’t always worked well at camp. While we are far away from ever being ADA compliant, we have realized in recent years how many things we can do with modest change to our grounds that have a major impact. In the past few years we’ve built a ramp to Stevens, Woodman, Anderson, Upper Lodge and the Artshop. Work on our radar in the coming years:
Finish grooming the path to reach the artshop ramp
Landscaping around the showerhouse porch
Replace the staircase between the Woods Quad and parkling lot with a ramp.
Install a ramp to the upper sweet porch.
Install automatic door openers for the lodge and Gilman
Construct charging stations for electric wheelchairs.
Invest in a microphone/hearing aid system
Add image descriptions for all photos on our website
Caption all Unirondack videos/media
Create a virtual tour of camp for people with disabilities to view and assess their own access needs/requests
Campership Program
If you’re unable to meet the cost of camp programs, we have a robust campership program. We try to offer anyone who applies for a campership what we can and often pull from our operating budget to meet the needs of our applicants. We have a variety of campership opportunities for all of our summer and spring/fall programs.
Changing Camp’s experience as a white space
We are proud of the work we do to make Unirondack a welcoming space, and also recognize the places that Unirondack and the larger summer camp industry often fall short when it comes to creating a space for people of color.
The history of summer camp programs in the U.S. is one founded on appropriation of Indigenous education, crafts, and culture, as well as being intended as school enrichment opportunities that were exclusive to upper-class white youth. And we feel that recognizing that history is important to being a better camp in a better industry.
Because of this and many other reasons, summer camps are often overwhelmingly white spaces. But that does not mean that “summer camp is for white people.” — A sentence we’ve seen winced at by people of color who have fallen in love with summer camps and the outdoors.
Unirondack is slowly but surely changing our experience as a white space. People of color in our community have created a retreat exclusively for people of color, we’re updating our menu and programming, and this year we’re bringing on a consulting agency to assist us in addressing the ways our hiring practices perpetuate our lack of diversity among staff.