Camp Noah is a safe, caring and fun environment with curriculum specifically designed to help children heal by processing their disaster experience.
How can you help?
Your financial support helps bring healing to children affected by a disaster experience.
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Send donations by check to:
Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, ATTN: Camp Noah
SDS 12-2054
PO Box 86
Minneapolis, MN 55486-2054
Other ways you can help:
Upcoming Camp Sessions
To enroll your child in camp, please contact the local camp coordinator.
Zumbro Falls (Southern MN) – June 27-July 1
Camp Noah for children who live in communities affected by floods.
Please contact Betsy Andrews at 612.741.7234 or ea.lssmn.drt@gmail.com
For information about additional camps that will be offered this summer in regions throughout the United States affected by disasters, please contact Caitlin Hughes at 612.879.5313 or caitlin.hughes@lssmn.org.
How does Camp Noah help children?
Camp Noah’s five-day curriculum celebrates each child’s unique gifts and talents, provides an opportunity for them to share their own story, and offers a safe place for them to face their fears and grieve their losses.
At Camp Noah, children are encouraged to understand they are part of a community that supports them, and that they are able to make a difference in the world. Equipped with these new resiliency skills, they can anticipate a future with renewed hope and a sense of preparedness, no matter what might come their way
Since all children express themselves differently, we use a variety of creative ways for them to express themselves, all within the context of having fun through games, art, reading, drama, writing, small group discussion and recreational play.
How is Camp Noah unique?
There are other organizations that work with children traumatized by disaster. But Camp Noah is unique in these special ways:
- Camp Noah comes to YOU: Our camps are brought to the disaster affected community and are typically hosted at a church or community center.
- Trained Teams: Volunteer teams that are specially trained bring renewed enthusiasm and energy into often devastated communities.
- Kids Tell Their Story: The week-long format allows children the time and space necessary to process their disaster experience with safe and caring volunteers.
- Children Learn Resiliency: Our curriculum teaches resiliency skills in a fun play-centered environment, allowing children to interact with their peers who have experienced similar circumstances.
- Families Find More Help: We connect families with additional community services that will provide support long after Camp Noah has ended.
- Volunteers Become Your Advocates: Shares a community’s disaster story with volunteers who in turn become advocates for those communities.
Our Mission:
- To support youth and children affected by disaster:
- Give children a voice in an often chaotic and challenging environment.
- Facilitate healing by reducing the disaster-related stress symptoms they exhibit.
- Build resiliency by providing activities that equip youth and children to feel more prepared to deal with re-occurring traumatizing life events.
- To support and empower community leaders of disaster-impacted areas to minister to their children:
- We partner with local and regional leaders.
- We encourage collaboration among community groups.
- We provide best practices, training and curriculum.
- We recruit and coordinate additional regional/national resources as needed.
- To equip and empower volunteers to serve vulnerable populations:
- Give volunteers across the United States an opportunity to serve in a community often in great need of additional human resources.
- Train volunteers in “best practice techniques” for teaching resiliency to children.
- Create opportunities for volunteers to advocate for disaster-affected communities now, and in the future.
Our History:
Camp Noah began as a response to the massive flooding in the Red River Valley in northern Minnesota and North Dakota in 1997. Since then, Camp Noah has matured into a nationally recognized program for children affected by natural and human-caused disasters. Each subsequent summer the Camp Noah program has funded, supported and coordinated hundreds of camps in dozens of locations across the United States with the help of a diverse group of faithful partners. In the last four years Camp Noah has held 167 camps, served 7220 children and youth and over 3080 volunteers in 17 different states.
Camp Noah is proud to be a part of Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota and its mission: to express the love of Christ for all people through service that inspires hope, changes lives and builds community.
