
Letters to Public Health
Summer camp is important part of any person’s formative years. You can ask most people, adult or child, what their favourite memories of their summers were and the answer is almost always: “My time at camp.” Kids discover how to explore the outdoors, they play with other kids their own age, they try new sports and activities they’ve never tried before, and they learn how to be good people.
Picture this: no summer camp for the second year in a row. We hope that that doesn’t happen. At CANSPEI, we are working with Public Health to create some guidelines for our member camps on how we can open.
Our hope is to provide public health with some testimonials, information, and data from your camp. Below is a letter template that we have made to make this process more simple. Please fill out the accompanying form, and we will create a letter with your camp's information that we can use when working with public health. We will email you a copy of the letter as well for you to keep on file.
To the Chief Medical Officer and Officials at the Department of Health:
I am the/a {Role with Camp} at {Camp Name}, and I am writing to you today to talk about a topic that is of great concern to me.
COVID-19 has greatly impacted our province in many ways since its emergence in 2019. One of the sectors that has been impacted the most has been our province’s children. Last summer’s stay at home orders were especially trying as kids who would normally be playing outside with their friends, going on vacations, and participating in group activities were told that these pursuits were no longer safe. This has had an incalculable impact on the physical and mental health of the children of our province.
This is why I am advocating for the reopening of overnight camp for the summer of 2021. Camp has been and continues to be an important part of many people’s lives. Camp is a place where children develop physically, socially, and emotionally, and its benefit to that development cannot be overstated. The possibility that there might not be overnight summer camp for a second year in a row is a possibility that I would not like to consider.
{Camp Name} is an organization that matters to my community, both from a child development perspective and from an economic perspective. In 2019, we had {Number of Campers in 2019} campers participate in our programming and employed {Number of Employees in 2019} people. Unfortunately, because of COVID-19, our numbers dropped to {Number of Campers in 2020} campers and {Number of Employees in 2020} employees in 2020.
{Opportunity for You to Share Other Things that You Think Government Officials Should know About the Summer Camp Situation}
Thank you so much for taking the time to read about my concerns and to consider them when making the decisions that impact so many people in our province.
Sincerely,
{Your Name}
{Camp Name}