The summer of 2021 is going to be a historic one at Camp Mini-Yo-We!
Your kids have the chance to be a part of Mini-Yo-We as we make history together! This is the perfect season for you to encourage your kids to come and attend Camp. It will be momentous for so many reasons that you will be learning more about in the coming months. This will be our 75th summer hosting campers. For over seven decades, we have been serving tens of thousands of campers who have enjoyed being a part of Camp Mini-Yo-We. Obviously, with COVID, there are a few things we need to consider so we can host a different kind of summer, and we do our best to be as straightforward as possible and outline these considerations as simply as we can.
You can also check out our Health & Safety page and the rest of our website to get a sense of the impact of COVID on our operation for 2021.
Health and Safety are Top Priorities for Us!
It takes a lot of trust to send a child away for a week, and we do not take that lightly! At Camp, our first organizational priority is the safety of our campers. A safe environment is the foundation for a fun summer camp experience. We have a great team working year-round to provide a safe and exciting place for your children.
We are doing everything possible to keep your kids healthy and safe. We are changing and updating some of our protocols, but here are three major things that we are doing to help ensure that your kids will not only have a fun time but stay healthy while they are doing it.
Clinical – Adding More Medical and Hygiene Support
Medical services have always been a part of what we do at Camp. Every week we have at least three nurses that are a part of our volunteer team. This summer we do anticipate continuing that pattern for the entire summer. Some weeks we have a doctor who also serves our community right on site.
We do this because having medical help close to our campers ensures their health and safety. On top of our normal regimes and practices, we are continuing to increase our health and safety efforts to ensure that your campers are safe and COVID-free.
We will be increasing handwashing stations across the site by adding some fun new Camp spins on ensuring excellent hygiene practices while your kids are at Mini-Yo-We.
We are increasing our cleaning across our entire facility to ensure that our facilities are as sterile as possible.
Contact tracing will be a normal part of every day at Camp. We will be doing documented daily check-ins with each staff member and camper to show exactly where everyone’s health stands while they are on site. We will be reviewing those records daily and taking appropriate action if we see that anybody may be experiencing any symptoms related to COVID.
Again, we will be increasing our clinical efforts this year to ensure that campers are as safe and healthy as possible as we enter into the best summer of our existence, our 75th anniversary.
Cohorts – Reducing the Total Number People Your Child Comes in Contact With
This summer at Mini-Yo-We your campers will come in contact with fewer individual kids and staff than they normally would in a typical summer.
We are accomplishing this primarily by keeping our campers travelling with their cabin group and sections for their entire experience.
This comes down to how they will travel between activities, how they will engage with our creative programming, and what they will do around our mealtimes.
We are doing all these things to reduce the total number of kids that they will end up engaging with, similar to what has happened in schools, as there are stronger limitations between kids engaging from various groups to ensure a better ability to track their connections with other kids.
This reduction in the total number of contacts that any individual kid will have will ensure our contact tracing is more straightforward to accomplish and will dramatically reduce the potential spread of any sickness that may connect through our camper community.
Capacity – Increasing Social Distance Space at Camp
We are choosing to reduce our overall capacity by 50% for the summer of 2021 at this point.
Currently, we believe this will help us best meet the regulations that the Ontario government will put down for us to reasonably serve campers this coming summer. Having fewer campers on site will give us more space for each individual camper. This will give us the ability to socially distance in all our activities.
At this point, we believe it is the most prudent way for us to ensure that every camper is safe and healthy when it comes to attending camp this summer. However, the summers of 2017, 2018 and 2019 were our largest summers ever, and because we have reduced our capacity by 50%, we are anticipating that we will sell out quickly. Therefore, you would be wise to register your kids for Camp Mini-Yo-We on Thursday, January 21st, 2021, when we open registration at 9:00 AM.
We do anticipate that we will sell out this quickly at this capacity, and we will take a waitlist beyond that. If the regulations change in the future, or as the Ontario government articulates their regulations, we may modify our capacity going forward.
Our Highest Priority at Camp Mini-Yo-We is the Health and Safety of Your Kids
We will do whatever we can to not just meet but exceed the regulations that the Ontario Government puts out for the operation of overnight summer camps.
At Camp Mini-Yo-We we believe that kids need camp. They need the social engagement that we provide; they need the opportunity to get outside. To enjoy all that Muskoka has to offer, they need the opportunity to try new activities and to grow and stretch. They need the chance to engage with the teachings of Jesus in a caring and loving environment. They need the chance to come to Camp.
We would love to see your kids at Camp Mini-Yo-We this summer!
We are working closely with the Ontario Camps Association and the provincial government to develop and implement rigorous policies for next summer to ensure the safety of our community. In addition to our regular safeguards, we will be implementing new policies involving pre-camp screening, reduced overall capacity, cohorting of campers and staff, and heightened cleaning and disinfection practices.
As these guidance documents from Public Health are released, we will be updating our community on our policies for summer 2021.
Summer 2021 Registration
Registration is next summer is now OPEN! Secure your spot for just $1 when you register today. Got questions about this summer? Contact our Customer Care Team at info@miniyowe.com or 705-385-2629.
