Camp awarded grant to aid Delaware Valley students

Camp Speers YMCA has been awarded a $10,000 grant to fund outdoor environmental education for local elementary school children onsite at the historic sleepaway camp.

The grant will were given by the Robert H. Spitz Foundation and administered by Scranton Area Community Foundation.

The Robert H. Spitz Foundation supports programs that break the cycle of poverty by providing access to housing, transportation, and education. Environmental education is one of the Foundation’s 2025 priority areas. Camp Speers has incorporated environmental preservation into its curriculum since 1989, when a rare, endangered plant was discovered on its grounds.

“Camp Speers is so excited to be able to expand our Outdoor Education programming and partner with the Delaware Valley School district to serve even more children,” said Jackie Pentecharsky, Camp Speers YMCA’s Executive Director. “Students will get the opportunity to take a break from their classroom to experience what the outdoors can teach. We are grateful to the Robert H. Spitz Foundation for powering this partnership’s expansion.”

Camp Speers YMCA opened in 1948 as the first racially integrated American YMCA summer camp. Since then, Speers has welcomed 200,000 youth to the camp’s 1,100 acres of pristine woodlands.

Today, Camp Speers’ facilities have grown from one old inn surrounded by borrowed tents to a campus of more than 60 buildings, centered around Lake Nichecronk. The camp continues its commitment to inclusion through programs like Dragonfly Forest, a specialty overnight camp for children with various medical conditions, served by trained counselors and medical teams.

The grant was given by the Robert H. Spitz Foundation, which supports programs that break the cycle of poverty by providing access to housing, transportation, and education. The funds will be administered by Scranton Area Community Foundation.

Research shows environmental education provides significant benefits:, such as better student performance in science, math, and reading, increased connectedness to nature and pro-social behavior in children and opening career paths in education, museums, NGOs simply from the exposure.

Throughout the Delaware Valley, the Greater Philadelphia YMCA serves more than 200,000 individuals each year – regardless of age, income or background – across 16 service locations in Berks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Philadelphia, Pike, Burlington and Camden counties. Coupled with 80+ childcare sites, 30+ day camps, and one overnight camp in the Poconos, the Y has extraordinary reach in connecting people to healthier lives. For more information, call 215-963-3700 or log onto philaymca.org.