Leadership Camps

It’s with a heavy heart that Minnesota Farmers Union, after careful consideration, has decided to suspend in-person camp sessions for 2020. We know that this is disappointing news for our camp community and trust that you understand that our highest priority when making this decision was the well-being, health and safety of our campers, staff and community. We are especially cognizant of what these changes mean for older campers anticipating their final summer as campers. As such, we are brainstorming offerings for them for later in 2020 or possibly summer 2021. We will keep these campers informed as we know more.

This decision was not made lightly. We know camp is an important part of every child’s summer. However, given this unprecedented situation, we have had to take difficult steps to ensure that MFU can withstand this pause to camp operations. In making the decision to not hold in-person camp sessions this summer we took numerous variables into account: housing of our counselors; whether Sibley State Park would be allowed open; having enough time to communicate with stakeholders; parent/guardian concerns; and the fact that social distancing is incompatible with our camp facilities’ layout; just to name a few.

We have been particularly concerned with guidelines from the American Camp Association, Center for Disease Control, Federal Government and National Farmers Union. The following updates have been recently issued:

• According to the federal guidelines, after safer at home orders are lifted, there will be limits on the number of people allowed to gather in a space.
• According to phase one of the federal guidelines, individuals should “avoid socializing in groups of more than 10 people in circumstances that do not readily allow for appropriate physical distancing (e.g., receptions, trade shows).”
• The federal guidelines outline strict social distancing requirements that will be put in place for events like camp. This would severely limit the amount of activities, games and community building that is typically expected of camp.
• According to the American Camp Association (ACA) and Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc. (EH&E), another potential difficulty for safely hosting camp would be sufficient access to essential medical and cleaning supplies.
• National Farmers Union has made the decision to cancel All States Leadership Camp for the summer of 2020.

If you’ve already registered for camp, a full refund of all fees and deposits will be issued back to the credit card used. Please contact us if you haven’t received the refund by the end of May.

If you have any questions, please reach out to MFU Education Director Glen Schmidt at 651-288-4066 or by email at glen@mfu.org.