Resource Library

Each year, ACA’s Eleanor P. Eells Award for Program Excellence recognizes camps that epitomize the spirit of the award’s namesake through their efforts to provide sterling programming that effectively and innovatively addresses the needs of people and society through the camp experience. We applaud the 2020 recipients. They are all definitive proof of the right camp program’s capacity to equip campers of all abilities and backgrounds with the resiliency and conviction to build better futures for themselves and their communities.

In the summers of 2017 and 2018, the West Virginia 4-H camp program experienced multiple incidents where camps were locked down due to armed suspects in the area. In one incident, a man stole a truck and shot at a family’s home within a mile of a 4-H camp in session. In another incident, an armed suspect resurfaced near the camp facility area where he was ultimately captured.

Dear Colleagues,

I wish to express deep gratitude to all of ACA’s volunteers, leaders, donors, sponsors, partners, and members for your generous leadership and support over the past year and especially during this cataclysmic pandemic. Your generosity of wealth, time, and talent has helped ACA provide leadership and support in many ways to camps across the country facing precarious and unprecedented challenges.

In addition to the current COVID-19 pandemic, you may also recall norovirus and SARS (also a coronavirus) outbreaks, Ebola, or even 2009's H1N1 "Swine Flu." There are lots of communicable diseases out there — and they won't go away. Indeed, the threat of communicable disease will remain as long as humans are social beings.