Parents across Vermont carefully consider the options for enjoyable, healthy, and safe experiences for their children during the summer.The parents of children who live in affordable housing have the added challenge of finding scholarship-funded, structured programs that offer the opportunity to experience the best of what Vermont has to offer—open fields,trails through the woods and along streams, rolling hills, and a variety of ecosystems that provide room for environmental education. Fortunately, there is Camp DREAM.

Camp DREAM offers an outdoor summer experience in a VLT-conserved beautiful location, and the counselors are college students who mentor the same children throughout the school year. With this year’s conservation of 50 acres in the town of Fletcher, many Vermont children living in affordable housing will be assured wonderful summer experiences that complement and strengthen the year-long mentoring relationships.

Camp is a relatively recent addition to DREAM, but progress has been remarkably fast. When the first session was held in the summer of 2004, there was little more than a canvas tent at the end of a dirt path. Now, Camp has an access road, an organic garden, a chicken coop, a boathouse, an amphitheater, a network of hiking and mountain biking trails, a ropes course, lean-to shelters, and a tree house, with more plans in the works. “The idea is to build infrastructure that makes Camp safer and easier to run, but without taking away from the rustic experience,” explains Chris Howell, Camp DREAM’s Director of Planning and Development.

DREAM is using construction as an opportunity to meet its new neighbors. A recent tree house addition, a startling sight at 32 feet high, was built from locally harvested lumber from a family-owned sawmill down the road. Many of the veggies served at Camp come from a nearby Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) enterprise. According to Operations Director Lu Neuse, Camp will also continue to serve as a place of recreation for the surrounding community. “The easement protects the land for the uses it’s had for more than 50 years, and our improvements enhance those activities,” she says. “We’ve already had a number of hunters thank us for building the trails.”

Above all, Camp puts an exceptional piece of Vermont in the hands of some of the state’s most underserved children. “Many of these kids have no access to wild places,” explains Lu. “And even for those who do have some woods nearby, Camp is different because they feel ownership of it.”