Camp Venture is a one-of-a-kind business education summer camp. Our main objective is to provide memorable, high-quality summer camp experiences to our participants, and we take great steps to meet this objective.
Our Camp Director, Jack Meagher, is an experienced and passionate business student who founded and runs Camp Venture. Jack has over a decade of combined business and youth programming experience, which has allowed him to develop a strong curriculum for Camp Venture's participants.
Jack is currently a senior at Edina High School. He'll graduate this Spring and double major in business and law at George Washington University in the Fall. He has been a Boy Scout for 10 years, a Scout youth leader for 6 years, and an Eagle Scout for 4 years. In 2023, he was chosen by the Boy Scouts of America to represent the United States at an international Scouting conference while serving as an international media representative. In the Edina community, Jack has helped mentor dozens of boys and girls in their journey to becoming Eagle Scouts, while coordinating countless community engagement and service events. As both a participant and leader of many Scout summer camps, Jack has confidently created Camp Venture and its program with excitement, participant engagement, and fun as the core guiding principles.
Outside of Scouting, Jack has been the President of the Edina High School Business Club for the past 4 years, actively growing the club to 160 members and developing a strong community of skilled business enthusiasts. He has also been a three-time state DECA competitor and a finalist in the Edina Shark Tank competition. In his competitive activities, Jack excels in management, marketing, business law, supply chain management, and sales. Additionally, his leadership of the Edina Business Club and weekly skill workshops/competitions have allowed him to develop a balanced, innovative program for Camp Venture that thoroughly teaches our participants the business basics.
Aligning with our mission to provide memorable, high-quality summer camp experiences to our participants, Camp Venture only hires exceptionally experienced counselors who will contribute to our mission.
Our prospective counselors are recruited for demonstrating great mastery in a field of business, or for possessing substantial experience in youth programming. Many of our counselors have been recruited for competing in DECA at the national level, becoming Eagle Scouts with great demonstrated ability to teach and lead, or undertaking large youth business programming initiatives through Twin Cities business organizations.
All of our counselors undergo rigorous training to understand our program and be able to effectively teach it to our participants. They serve the role of providing guidance on our business lessons, helping participant groups as needed, and working with our other counselors to make Camp Venture a memorable, immersive, and high-quality experience for our participants.
While Camp Venture places great importance on fun, the safety of our participants is our top priority. As an Eagle Scout and experienced camper who has responded to everything from flash floods at night to heart attacks in the middle of the woods, our Camp Director has many systems in place to ensure participant safety.
Camp Venture is a summer camp and there is inherent risk in having kids at a summer camp. While we are indoors and have a much more controlled environment, our participants are still energetic teenagers who are going to run around and have fun. As part of our recreational activities, we have various tabletop games and a small sports court that is open to be used by participants for tennis, pickleball, or soccer.
Due to the risk of injury, we have a medical policy in place that dictates exactly how we respond to physical injuries and medical emergencies. Our counselors are all required to complete a Red Cross first aid course and fully understand our medical policy in order to work at Camp Venture. This dedication to participant safety helps minimize the risk of injury and ensures the effectiveness of our counselors' emergency responses.
Beyond physical injury, Camp Venture recognizes the crucial component of youth protection at our summer camp. To proactively prevent any form of abuse within our camp, we ensure that all communications are transparent, and one-on-one contact is not allowed. All Camp Venture staff receive thorough training on all of our youth protection rules to ensure participant safety.
To keep communications transparent, we ensure that parents are copied on communications sent to their child. This includes text messages and emails sent by a Camp Venture employee, but may not include automatic emails such as form confirmation emails, payment confirmation emails, or other non-personalized emails as applicable.
In accordance with our no one-on-one contact policy, we do not allow a Camp Venture employee to be alone in a non-visible space with a Camp Venture participant. For the most part, participants will either be in our recreational common space or their team office. In our common space, they will be among numerous fellow participants and staff members. In their team office, participants will be in the company of their teammates, and if a staff member steps in to provide guidance on the current challenge, there will be other participants in the room to prevent one-on-one contact.
In the event that a participant needs to be temporarily removed from the program area for behavioral issues, they will likely be asked to take a seat in the staff office to discuss their behavior. In events like these, we try our best to have two staff members present. If taking two staff members away from the current program to sit in the office isn't possible, then we ensure that at least one other staff member is in the line of sight of the staff office, which has large unobstructed windows.
As a final precaution taken to ensure participant safety, we are fully insured and follow several additional safety protocols as required by our insurance provider. All of our employees are required to undergo a third-party background check, and we do not hire counselors with a criminal record. We do not provide transportation to participants and do not host any off-site activities. We also have cameras in all of our common spaces in accordance with our privacy policy to help keep our participants and staff both safe and accountable, and to keep our camp facility secure.
