My family had a very poor experience with this organization, specifically the summer…read moreCounselor-in-Training program. We did our due diligence - spoke with a staff member about their programs, had a positive encounter with them during a community event, and perused the website. Everything seemed like it'd be a good fit, so we signed up for two weeks of camp (again, as a Counselor-in-Training) Day 1 -- our daughter comes home and recalls how she was asked to sit with one child, one-on-one, all day. The staff suggested that this child had "behavioral issues", and that our daughter should come get them (the Counselors) if he did not listen and did anything wrong. As a former counselor + advocate, I did not like how this sounded, but wanting to give the organization a solid chance and wanting to foster resilience in our daughter, we sent her back for a second day. Day 2 -- our daughter comes home and recalls she was asked to organize a bookshelf, which took her 40 minutes, and had very little interactions with the counselors -- whom she was supposed to be learning from. Now I'm agitated. For, these were NOT the type of experiences we had expected and wanted for our daughter; we pulled her from the camp after just two days. She was never given proper instructions or opportunities to learn from the counselor nor asked to work with campers working on art projects; but to have our child sit with one camper, one-on-one, all day, was a huge red flag and liability issue that I could no longer overlook. When reaching out to share our concerns, the owner responded and suggested our daughter fabricated everything. That the experiences our daughter had were not consistent with how their staff saw things. This left me flabbergasted that the staff had no empathy for our daughter and her experiences there, did not validate our concerns as a family, and essentially suggested our daughter made it up. There was no accountability; NOT ONE THING her staff could have done differently? Nor was there self-reflection to rumble with -- how could they have helped our daughter have a better experience. Only condescending finger pointing wrapped in ultra polite and polished language. On top of it all, the organization has a no refund policy. So my family paid $400 for our daughter to learn skills of a Counselor-in-Training, she attended just two day, and all she took away was being a 1:1 aide (again, the liability piece was overlooked by the staff in their response!) and organizing a bookshelf. I expected more from a non-profit organization! They have our money - see if you can use our balance towards your enrollment fees!
