February School Vacation 2017 Wrap- Up

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This year’s February Vacation Week was our biggest ever.  We had 8 groups visit us, almost all returning from last year. Returning February Vacation Week Groups included Tenacity, Cambridge Community Center, East End House, Malden Family Housing (twice), and Brookview House while our new February Vacation Week Groups were Waltham Boys and Girls Club and Morse School Community School. Throughout the week, we served 133 youth, and around 35 adults.  This was an increase of almost 40% over last year’s February Vacation numbers.   Every single group that visited had at least one camper who had never gone sledding before.  Sledding is often a great introduction to outdoor experiences in winter time, and being able to provide these opportunities, both for youth who have never gone, and for those who cannot go often, is regularly our staff’s favorite part of February Vacation Week.

We made full use of the new winterized space in our barn (A big THANK YOU to First Parish Lincoln for providing the funding for the barn winterization) and it was really wonderful to have extra space to stretch out in.  The new space also expanded our capacity by making it possible to welcome a smaller group into the farmhouse office as the larger morning group was getting ready to go from the barn space.

Due to the unseasonably warm weather toward the end of the week, we lost our snow on the sledding hill, but still had plenty of snow for fort building and snowball fights.

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