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07/18/2023 12:02 PMJuan Camilo Rios has done something for the past 10 summers that youngsters but few adults do: He has gone to YMCA camp. He is doing it again this year, his 11th at Camp Hazen YMCA in Chester.
Getting to camp is not an insignificant trip for him, some 2,700 miles from his home in Popayán, Colombia, a provincial city some eight to 10 hours driving from Bogota, the capital of Colombia.
“It’s only one hour by air,” Juan Camilo adds.
This summer, Juan Camilo is one of the camp’s two program directors, responsible for organizing and overseeing the many activities available to campers, from mountain biking and skateboarding to traditional camp favorites like swimming and canoeing.
According to Denise Learned, executive director/CEO of Camp Hazen, the camp now has a tiered payment plan to make the camping experience available to as wide a range of youngsters as possible. Some 40% of campers, including both those at the day and the overnight camp, receive some form of financial aid.
“In order to increase the number of children served across all socioeconomic backgrounds, we need to be able to increase the total amount of financial assistance dollars that we are able to distribute,” Learned noted. Camp Hazen has an annual appeal to raise funds to cover this financial aid, this year aiming for a total of $300,000.
By now, Juan Camilo is familiar not only with life at camp but with the places counselors visit on their time off, ticking off local restaurants in Chester as well as a favorite ice cream store, and adding, “Of course, we go to Deep River, Essex, and Old Saybrook too.”
Juan Camilo was a student at the University of Cauca, one of the oldest in Colombia, and wanted to study abroad his final year. He couldn’t find a suitable program through the university but heard about an exchange opportunity through the YMCA in Colombia that placed qualified young people as counselors in YMCA camps in the United States.
He had studied English and had successful interviews with YMCA officials in Colombia. The next step was an online interview with a Camp Hazen staffer.
That interview was a problem, not because Juan Camilo was unsuitable, but because there was so much static on the line that he and the interviewer could scarcely hear each other. A far more successful online session followed.
Juan Camilo was hired as a mountain bike instructor. In Colombia, he says, he had gotten around Popayán on a bicycle.
“I biked everywhere,” he says.
The biking was not a problem for Juan Camilo. English, however, was. At the airport coming to camp, when he asked a policeman a question, Juan Camilo recalls, “He couldn’t understand anything I said.”
The campers in the cabin that he and another counselor were in charge of were far more forgiving.
“I wasn’t fluent, but they knew my actions spoke louder than words. They understood me,” Juan Camilo says.
Moving up the YMCA ladder from counselor, Juan Camilo went on to be a village director and in charge of the leadership program. He is proud now that some of the young people he worked with in that program progressed to become counselors and directors themselves.
Juan Camilo, like all counselors, has had to deal with one of the recurring features of sleep-away camp, particularly for first-time campers: homesickness. He tells campers that, when compared to what would be available in his country, they are having an opportunity that is invaluable.
“We encourage them to keep trying, to seek out new things, and to make an effort to connect with others; they can have an amazing two weeks if they do,” he says.
If he were a camper, Juan Camilo says the activities he would sign up for are mountain biking, “100% mountain biking,” he says, along with wood burning and soccer. He describes using a hot stylus to burn designs into wood blocks as “very relaxing,” and as far as soccer goes, he says he could play for hours. Campers tell him he is very good, but he deflects the compliments. “Omigosh, if they could only see my friends in Colombia,” he says.
Representing his country is very important to Juan Camilo. To begin with, he wants to make sure people know how to spell it.
“It is not Columbia with a U; it is Colombia with two Os,” he says. “I am proud to be a Latino, and I feel like an ambassador to show my country and my people.”
Juan Camilo has usually come to this country on a six-month visa, which has given him a chance to see other parts of the United States when camp sessions finish. He has visited 22 national parks, but this year he has another destination. Through a DNA testing site, Juan Camilo’s family found a relative who had been adopted and now lives in the United States. He describes her as a “half aunt.” This year, when camp is over, Juan Camilo will go to North Dakota to meet her.
For more information on Camp Hazen or to make a contribution, visit camphazenymca.org.