Anna Overbeck, Camp Director, Camp Hoover
1. Tell us a little about your journey to becoming a camp director.
I have worked at summer camps in some capacity since I was legally allowed to have a job. I fell in love with summer camp and everything I learned as a camper. In search of a passion that would carry me through life, I discovered you can major in the outdoors! I earned my recreational management degree and started my experience as a leader in the outdoor space. I am so incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to pour that into a new generation of campers here in New York State as camp director at Hoover. I love watching them flourish!
2. What is Camp Hoover? Can you describe a typical day there?
Camp Hoover offers summer day camps run by Girl Scouts of NYPENN Pathways. Everyone is welcome to participate and grow together outdoors. We have sessions for all genders and some just for girls.
Our days start and end together singing songs and playing games. Campers are then split up by age and quickly form tight-knit groups. They participate in classic camp activities, like canoeing, swimming in our private lake, archery, art, and hammocking in our trees (a camper favorite). Depending on the week, activities at Camp Hoover may also include LEGO building, pioneer games, and even learning to (foam) sword fight.
3. What makes Camp Hoover unique from other camps in the area?
I truly believe that our dedicated full-time and seasonal camp staff sets GSNYPENN summer camp programming and our four outdoor properties, including Hoover, apart from others in this area. Our staff are passionate and driven about what they do. With our smaller ratios, they’re able to form deep connections with our campers and help them grow into humans who make the world a better place.
4. What is your favorite part of your role?
My favorite part of being camp director at Hoover is implementing our programming. Ten-year-old me would be ecstatic to lead a (foam) sword-fighting class and develop an escape room!
Emery Grant, Program Director, Beyond
1. What led you to become the program director of Beyond?
In undergraduate school, I took a lot of gender and sexuality, sociology, and cultural studies classes. After graduating, I began building a career in the cultural nonprofit sector at organizations with a lens focused on equity; whether through supporting voices in the literary arts or writing grants to increase access to fine arts classes for Black inner-city youth. I then found myself working for nonprofits that specifically uplifted the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people, like the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C. and the Stonewall National Museum, Archives and Library in Florida, where I directed a national education program organized around school policy and curriculum for LGBTQ+ students in public schools.
Throughout my career, I’ve benefitted from tremendous mentors and wanted to come back to my birthplace in Northern New York, particularly as an adult transgender person, to be able to give back.
I became very motivated to take conversations about bodily autonomy, agency, LGBTQ+ history, and the power of affirmation, and implement what I learned about data-driven best practices that mitigate health disparities disproportionately faced by LGBTQ+ youth. Beyond was an opportunity to create programs and link resources that meet a need that makes these things accessible, relatable, tangible, and most of all impactful in day-to-day life for LGBTQ+ youth and families.
2. Can you share the mission of Beyond?
Beyond strives to create spaces that support the health, success, and overall well-being of LGBTQ+ youth and their families, in which all LGBTQ+ youth may thrive. We envision a world where every LGBTQ+ youth recognizes their limitless potential, feels celebrated for who they are, and draws strength from a community that understands and supports them.
Beyond is powered by the Girl Scouts of NYPENN Pathways Council, whose mission is to build youth leaders with courage, confidence, and character. While one does not need to be a Girl Scout, or a girl for that matter, to participate in activities offered by Beyond, our missions are beautifully aligned.
Our programs are led by adult professionals from within the LGBTQ+ community.
3. What programs do you offer?
Now entering our fourth year, Beyond offers two consecutive sessions of week-long overnight summer camp for LGBTQ+ youth ages 12-17 called Camp Beyond Binary, shorter school break camps, all-family weekend camps, and monthly meetups that offer a facilitated activity, speaker, or excursion for LGBTQ+ youth ages 12-20. Our monthly meetups are supported by a generous grant from the Central New York Community Foundation.
For some of our events, younger siblings and all family members are encouraged to participate. They too have stories to tell and need to be seen and heard and to build connections.
Beyond is now starting to plan some travel experiences and will also offer day camps in the next year.
Beyond is also growing. In recent months I’ve hired more richly dynamic team members. Among them are experienced outdoor educators, ecologists, an experienced backcountry wilderness guide, a fine craftsman, a professor of cultural studies, a talented curriculum writer, and a very cool high school home economics teacher. These talented staff are poised to facilitate an unforgettable summer at Camp Beyond Binary.
4. What’s the most rewarding part of your role?
The most rewarding part of my role as Beyond program director is the affirmation that comes from connection, learning, growing together, digging into our common vulnerability, and sharing what makes us shine when we are at our best selves. I enjoy working with community organizations to live out our values and build a stronger and more inclusive network of resources in thoughtful ways and being reminded that LGBTQ+ youth are acutely aware of their environments in ways that make them creative, resilient, and highly capable.
I have met dozens of parents for whom Beyond is a place where their child builds meaningful friendships with peers who have similar experiences. To witness concern and worry on a parent’s face soften into joy and relief is something to behold. And through Beyond, adults find other adults they can turn to as well. Similarly rewarding is when a youth ages out of our program offerings, and you watch them move forward to take on new challenges.
Addressing health disparities, such as depression and suicidal ideation, that LGBTQ+ youth disproportionately face is very serious. But our programming and Camp Beyond Binary give us a tremendous forum for exploration and change through a place to be silly, expansive, and imaginative; to question by singing, joking, experimenting in the STEM Lab, discovering nature, playing, improvising, dreaming big, and making friends around a campfire.
In community with one another, Beyond is building a better world together and that is the most rewarding!
Know an educator who deserves a mention? Email [email protected].
