On May 26. 2024 the West KY storms left West KY 4-H Camp with damage and no power. Our camping group, which consisted of Calloway, Carlisle, Christian, Graves, and Hickman counties were scheduled to depart for camp the next day. Due to the damage, our group was first postponed by one day, but eventually the week was cancelled due to losing all the food for our group.. We had 493 disappointed campers and counselors and had to do something to make it up to them! 

First, each of our counties hosted some sort of camp related event later that week. Calloway, Graves, and Christian hosted Camp-palooza events, Hickman rented their local pool for a day for their campers, and Carlisle gave out take-home bags for campers. The KY 4-H Foundation provided funds that helped pay for these activities. Then, agents worked diligently with the camp director, and State 4-H Office to reschedule dates for 4-H Camp later in the summer. We were able to reschedule between groups over a weekend in July. The July dates resulted in camp being 1/2 day shorter so all 5 extension offices started refunding campers as soon as possible. Agents worked diligently to communicate the changes to all our camping families and started re-planning camp on an 8 week time-frame. We recruited new counselors, managed client protection process on new volunteers, rescheduled busses, fixed all the camp schedules, updated camp classes, held new orientations for counselors, and secured funds to pay for additional insurance, uhauls, background checks, additional checks purchased for refunds, etc. 

Finally, our rescheduled camping week arrived and as a group we were still able to take 361 people to camp! Youth were able to participate in classes which included indoor and outdoor cooking, expressive arts, fishing, mindfulness/yoga, science experiments, and more!  Night programs were a great way for campers to interact with each other as a team and make meaningful and lasting relationships with fellow campers and their counselors. Many youth, counselors, and parent expressed gratitude for camp being rescheduled and all campers expressed that they were able to try something new at camp!