Sunday, June 8, 2014

North Star Reach Mission Statement

North Star Reach offers life-changing camp experiences for children with serious health challenges and their families. 

1.     Kids & Families First
Every plan, paper airplane, decision and action is focused around the children and their families – our campers are our Polaris, our guiding North Star. If it is any indication, we take our paper airplanes very seriously.

2.     Playful Professionalism
Our goal of creating spectacularly average experiences for our campers requires the best of both worlds. Our commitment to the highest level of safety and care while laughing so hard your belly hurts takes hard work – work we embrace and are honored to undertake. Besides, oxymorons are fun – just ask any jumbo shrimp, they are generally the life of the party.

3.     Safety Is our Middle Name
Not really, but we considered it. North Safety Reach just did not sound as good as North Star Reach, but we liked the idea enough to incorporate safety into everything we do. In fact, most of our staff and volunteers were primary school safety guards.

4.     Camp Is a Prescription for Fun
The pillars of our camp are: Joy, Fun, Laughter and Song. We wanted to include popsicles, puppies and balloons, but someone said it didn’t sound professional enough.

5.     Reach Higher
There are no boundaries at camp due to a child’s condition or disability. Except the fence around camp, guess that’s kind of a boundary.

6.     Camp Rules
At camp, we only have four rules, one for each of your fingers. Safety. Respect. Love. Challenge By Choice. Safety is our number one priority. We respect people and the environment around us. Love is a commitment to one another. Camp is a place where you get to choose how to participate, not if you participate. Oh yeah, and have some serious fun. Guess that’s really five rules. This way your thumb won’t feel left out.

7.     Welcome to the Family
Our camp will be open and welcoming to all who enter without hesitation. Camp is a family and a community of caring people committed to making a difference for one another. Unless you’re a skunk. Skunks – with that little white stripe, you are cute and all, but we’d rather you stay home.

8.     Together Everyone Achieves More
We will work together as a team, learn as a team and grow as a team. We will support each other at all times and think of the team before ourselves. We will function in an efficient, ethical and professional manner using our diverse experience, knowledge and skills. In fact, we love teamwork so much we once tried to organize a pinball team. Turns out, pinball is more of a one person thing.

9.     Once in a Lifetime Happens Every Day
We will celebrate* successes of all shapes and sizes and give thanks. *Not all celebrations will include confetti, cake or dancing, but we’ll try.

10.  We Don’t Like Skunks but We Love R.A.T.S.
Rats are probably the last thing you would want at camp. R.A.T.S stands for responsibility, accountability, trust and stewardship. We will hold ourselves to the highest standard to be responsible with our financial, human and community resources through innovation, thoughtfulness and sticky notes. We have a ton of recycled sticky notes.

11.  Freedom
We allow for freedom and empowerment and choice. For example, you could choose to print this list out and make it into a paper airplane. We’d be cool with that – since you’d be putting kids first!

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