Hello! My name is Phoenix Turner, and I am 12 years old. I went to the first ever virtual winter YEA Camp. 

My IOI was anti-racism. Through camp I was taught so many ways to be a better activist and changemaker. The workshops this week were not just factual, but also fun. This camp has been a great experience I could never forget (nor would I want to). I have made great friends at camp that I hope to stay in touch with. 

Not only am I very passionate about anti-racism, but I am passionate about LGBTQ+ equality, climate change, mental health and animal rights, with many more in between. I have been wanting to go vegetarian for a long time, but I haven’t had the courage to ask my parents to let me. Through camp and making friends who are already vegan and vegetarian, I gained the courage to ask my parents, and they said yes! 

YEA Camp has made such a big impact on my life, and it will for other young activists too. There are so many things to learn at camp to not only help you be a better activist but to help you through life. I would 10/10 recommend YEA Camp to changemakers. If you want to make a change in your world and community, come to YEA camp!

We absolutely loved having Phoenix and all of our amazing campers at our first-ever winter session of YEA Camp!  They’ve given us so much inspiration and lots of ideas for the future. We’re going to be developing more virtual programming, and we’d love to hear from you if you’re interested! You can reach out to us in the chat box or through our Contact page.  Follow us on Instagram or Facebook for all our latest updates!

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Well, with our first session of Virtual YEA Camp, we found out! And we couldn’t be more proud or excited for what we accomplished.

First, our campers did so much activism!

In less than 5 days, they raised (that we know of) $3,696 for the organizations of their choice (including Charlie’s Acres, Color of Change, Equal Justice Initiative, Greenpeace, Lambda Legal, and the San Francisco SPCA), registered or reminded 1, 294 people to vote absentee (by mail), and made 81 advocacy phone calls to decision makers! Incredible!

In a supportive community, working with other youth passionate about the same cause and with the mentorship of one of our amazing staff members — all of whom are past YEA Campers who have gone on to do tons of really impressive activism themselves — our campers achieved things they never expected they could, and they did it in such a short period of time!

We also did so many fun activities, from a yoga class and a vegan cooking class to a scavenger hunt and a pet cuteness contest! (It was an all-way tie!)

We got such great feedback from campers we thought we’d share a few of their comments from our anonymous evaluations.

It’s not too late to sign up!

Do you know any youth ages 10-17 who want to make our world a better place?

We still have 3 weeks left of YEA Camp sessions with amazing guest speakers, super fun activities, and lots of activism and inspiration making a difference on the cause of your choice.

Our incredible staff will be here supporting you along the way!

The upcoming sessions are:

• Exploring the Issues – July 20-24
• Amplifying Your Message – July 27-31
• Careers for Changemakers – August 3-7

In this upcoming week 2, some things we’re really looking forward to:

• amazing guest speakers like Genesis Butler, Julia Clark, and Zoe Weil
• a vegan Mexican cuisine cooking class with celebrity vegan chef Eddie Garza
• a dance class with a celebrity guest dance teacher and choreographer, SuzE Q
• a virtual visit to Farm Sanctuary to spend time with the animals

It’s not too late to register, so if you’re 10-17 years old and want to make our world a better place, join us for a week (or 2 or 3) that will help you make a difference for the future!

Details and get registered at www.YEACamp.org.

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Pizza with Miyoko’s Cheese and “more toppings than we could count!”

One way we practice every day activism is by our food choices at camp.

For some of our campers and our staff, the allure of an all vegan camp is how they heard about us in the first place. For others, our vegan food is just another blurb on the FAQ page. YEA Camp is all about social justice and, at the end of the day, everyone at camp wants to build a more peaceful and sustainable world. That is why YEA Camp is vegan with a heavy focus on fair-trade, organic, and local options. 

The food we choose at the grocery store or out for dinner with friends is one of the simplest acts of every day activism we can do. Because of that, we hire a skilled team of vegan chefs to cook us amazing food that everyone can appreciate. 

This summer, we had some incredible companies donate their plant-based products to help us more affordably showcase the very best in vegan eating. 

Thank you to…

Amy’s Kitchen is a family-owned food company that was organic before “organic” was a national certification. Pioneers of the organic food industry (and maker of endless delicious vegan options), Amy’s has been with YEA Camp since year one and we are so grateful for their support!

Another family-owned business, Butler Foods donated their famous Butler Soy Curls, an all natural alternative to meat. Our chefs traded the traditional Chicken Noodle Soup for “Soy Curl Noodle Soup” for an extra dash of heart-healthy perfection. 

Sometimes we even let campers into the kitchen for baking demos!

Chicago Vegan Foods is a 100% vegan company (did the name give it away?) From their frozen dessert line to their gooey non-dairy cheese to their vegan marshmallows, Chicago Vegan Foods has something for everyone. Thank you Chicago Vegan Foods!

YEA Camp Trivia: Do you know what vegan company Camp Founder & Director Nora Kramer named her rescue dog after? Daiya the dog approves of Daiya Foods and all the “deliciously dairy-free foods” they bring to our camp. You can even find vegan frozen pizzas from Daiya in grocery stores around the country. Yum!

Started in 1970 when four friends “opened a seven-seat soup, salad, and sandwich counter in the back of small natural food store in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California,” Follow Your Heart now offers over 60 dairy-free products in over 25 countries. We are so grateful for their support and their reminder to, “when in doubt, Follow Your Heart.” 

We couldn’t get in line fast enough for this Miyoko’s inspired vegan pizza!

Miyoko’s Kitchen provided us with many a mid-day snack. Their cheese wheels were a hit at every session of camp and we especially love this quote, pulled from their website: “Compassion for animals is at the heart of everything we do. It always has been. It always will be.”

Like Amy’s Kitchen, Tofurky has been a generous support of YEA Camp for eleven years. We even wrote a feature post about them here! Tofurky has been providing us with plant-based protein since our very first session. Truthfully, it wouldn’t feel like camp without them!

We are so lucky to have their support!

YEA Camp would not be nearly as delicious were it not for the support of these awesome companies who are revolutionizing what it means to eat vegan. Campers often tell us that YEA Camp is what propelled them to eat a plant-based diet! What an honor to help our campers become more conscious about their food choices. We are so grateful to have the support of these compassionate companies. Their dedication to making the world a kinder and more ethical place inspires us all.

The time to announce dates for YEA Camp 2020 is coming soon. Be sure to sign up for e-news to make sure you’re the first to know!

The post These Generous Companies Make YEA Camp’s Food Even More Delicious appeared first on YEA Camp.

Even if you’re lucky enough not to be targeted directly, just watching the news or even our social media feeds these days bring a daily assault on so many issues progressives care about: human rights and equality, environmental protection, animal welfare, and the state of our democracy and our discourse, for starters.

How do we cope without burying our heads in the sand?

“Self-care” has become a popular topic in recent years, but it wasn’t a term I had even heard of when I started out as an activist 20 years ago. I recently recognized that, without consciously planning it, I’ve been using some key strategies that have helped me keep going all these years, though they’re a bit different than what folks normally think of when we think of self-care. In addition to the basics that most of us know (though may not necessarily do), like eating healthy, exercising, meditation, and getting enough sleep, choosing our approach to activism and how we engage with the problems in our world can help us use our time strategically and avoid burning out.

At Youth Empowered Action (YEA) Camp, a summer camp for social change, we have expanded our focus on self-care since the 2016 election. This year we will host our second year of YEA Camp for Adults as well, and we will make even more time for this. We will do yoga and journaling and meditation, yes, and we will also focus on how we can do activism in ways that not only make a big difference in the world but also sustain ourselves. We’ll also have time in nature and the opportunity to visit with rescued animals at the sanctuary we will be staying at. But I digress….

Here are 10 approaches to self-care that might support you in your journey as an activist and human.

1. Resist

So many YEA Campers have been speaking out against this administration.

It might seem like doing activism is not a form of self-care or is even the opposite of self-care, but resisting harm is self-preservation and helps us know we are taking action on what matters to us.

When your house is on fire, it’s hard to go take a bubble bath. We need to sound an alarm and put out the fires.

“Activism is the antidote to despair,” said Joan Baez, and taking action can not only bring about change but also keeps us action-oriented so we can protect ourselves and our community and don’t feel helpless.

While social justice issues are very interconnected, to avoid overwhelm, at YEA Camp we recommend focusing on one main issue, what we call your IOI, or issue of importance. Nobody can solve any of the major problems of the world alone, but all of our actions add up to make a cumulative difference. Taking breaks and pacing yourself as needed for you and your life are key.

To get more involved in activism opposing this administration, connect with Indivisible, sign up with 5 Calls to call your legislators, or get involved with any of the many organizations working to bring about social justice.

2. Focus on other types of activism you enjoy or can easily accomplish to see an in-person, real-time impact.

There is so much we can all do in our communities to make a difference.

Resistance activism is playing defense, stopping something bad from happening. As important as that currently is, it’s also difficult and exhausting, and a “victory” just means stopping something terrible.

We also need to proactively find ways to make good things happen. This can include volunteering at a local shelter or community organization, doing a neighborhood cleanup, teaching people what you know, or greening your school or office.

Is there a way to combine something you love to do with a cause you believe in? Or a way you could get involved that doesn’t involve convincing sold-out politicians to change their policies?

It’s also empowering to recommit to daily actions that you have direct control over. Think driving less, eating fewer animal products, boycotting harmful companies, buying less stuff, and speaking up in oppressive situations. Knowing that we are doing these daily things can help us feel OK about taking the time off we need. Try to bring humor, lightness, and joy to counter the stress associated with the issues we’re working to address.

3. Think of yourself in a larger activism context.

You don’t need to get your PhD in Social Change, but just learning about how change has happened in the past can reframe our thinking in a more long-term context. It can be humbling to realize just how many actions it takes to cumulatively bring about systemic change, and to recognize that none of us can ever do “enough.” That also frees us up to pace ourselves. Even though we may not see big results right away, each small step adds up. Two short videos about the gay rights movement and civil rights movement serve as a reminder that all of the actions so many people took led to big change.

4. Donate money.

If you’re feeling depleted or demoralized about the state of the world, a donation is essentially paying someone else to do the work that you’re not able to do. And giving not only does good, it makes us feel good — and activism that combines doing good with feeling good is a win-win that we should do as much as we can. Even better that it only takes a minute and then you can go do whatever you need to do.

Even if you are not in a good financial situation at the moment, since you’re reading this, you can probably donate $1. Maybe $10 or $100? Or more, if you can. Choose an organization doing good work (here are many we recommend), and then commission them (or us) to do more of it while you take time to do what you need to do.

5. Follow just the right amount of the right news.

As activists, we want to be generally aware of what is going on — sometimes it can be more stressful not to know — but you don’t need to know intimate details of every horrible thing happening in the world each day. Learn just enough of what you need to know for the activism you will be doing. Some specific tips:

• Remove any news apps from your phone and disable news notifications.
• Give yourself a time limit of the amount of time you can spend on the news or social media each day. Monitor it so it doesn’t get out of hand.
• Ask yourself: Do I really need to know the details of this? What will I do with this information? Will this help me to make a bigger difference, or make me feel more demoralized?
• Sometimes we need to laugh instead of cry. Watching Alec Baldwin’s dead-on Saturday Night Live performances, and critiques from Seth Myers, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, or Stephen Colbert can be as gratifying as a bubble bath. In fact, there’s actually reason to believe that satire is better equipped to critique Trump than mainstream news.

6. Build community and ask for what you need

Some of our community at YEA Camp for Adults

OK, enough about activism. We need to reach out and create tighter community than we’ve had before. We’ve currently got a perfect storm of disconnection. While so many of us communicate more with our friends by typing than talking, we also are more likely than older generations to move far away from our families and to be single later in life. Statistically, we’re less involved in community organizations, whether it be religious or civic, and we are less likely to know our neighbors. And there’s an all-out assault on just about every community of people, animals, and the planet who are not straight white men.

We need to know that we can count on others when we need it, and we will feel good to do the same for others. So meet your neighbors, try going to local events, maybe find a MeetUp, talk to people you come in contact with, connect with like-minded people through social media, and be in better touch with your expanding circle of friends and family. If you need help, there are resources to support you even in the most dire of circumstances.

At YEA Camp, we focus on giving campers the knowledge, skills, confidence, and community to make a bigger difference on their cause when they get home. We believe that being a part of a like-minded and dedicated community makes all of us stronger advocates. We want to be your cheerleader!

7. Manage your life and take care of yourself in ways that are right for you.

Typically, when we think of self-care, we may picture a spa day or yoga class, and these, of course, can be great. But we need to go deeper to assess what we can do to fully take care of ourselves.

In some ways, we all need the same basic things as a baseline, such as eating healthy food, access to clean drinking water, getting exercise, sleeping enough, safe shelter, and nourishing relationships. So many people, especially of lower income, are not getting these basic needs met.

• Evaluate different areas of life that cause you anxiety, from work stress to health issues to your home, relationships, or finances, and start dealing with the most critical ones.
• Get more rigorous doing what you need to do because taking care of ourselves is a precursor to taking care of others.
• Tackle unhealthy and develop healthy habits and practices as directly as possible to take care of yourself and your one precious life.

From stopping smoking to getting check-ups to paying bills on time, healing your relationships to pursuing your goals, or otherwise “adulting,” you are in charge of managing your life. When you don’t do it well, other things start to suffer, including your activism.

As activist hero Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

8. Figure out and do what you love.

YEA Camp for Adults is held at Woodstock Farm Sanctuary.

To stay in this for the long haul, we need to find ways to enjoy our lives, do the things we love, and step away from stressful situations when we need to. Many people are either not clear about what they truly enjoy doing, and many more are clear that they don’t spend much time doing what they love.

If you love to read or write or play music or be outdoors, make time to do that, even if it’s just for a few minutes a day or an hour or two a week.

One of my favorite things about our YEA Camp for Adults is that it is held at Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, which provides sanctuary and some animal friends to visit with while we are there as well. Animals have an innocence and gentleness that can be an antidote to stress and help restore our energy and feeling of unconditional love.

At YEA Camp, we combine the seriousness of activism training with fun activities to model sustainable activism.

9. Pursue fun and challenging hobbies and distract yourself as needed.

Pursuing challenging hobbies is a great way to trick your brain to take a break from what it was worrying about so that it can focus on the matter at hand. Studying a new language, learning a musical instrument, creating art, dancing, reading novels, playing games, and any sort of vigorous exercise are great for this. Find something you really enjoy that gets your mind off of things, and have that be your go-to when you need it.

10. Feel your emotions — the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Our compassion and empathy has led us to become activists for change, but these emotions can sometimes overwhelm us. We are not robots and cannot go numb. We also need to live our lives and enjoy the beauty and possibility that we can create in life.

Being guided by a healthy relationship to our emotions will not only help us as individuals, it will help us as activists. We’ve got to feel the good, the bad, and the ugly. That might mean crying when we need to, journaling, talking things through with friends, or seeing a therapist. It can mean being quiet and meditating or going out in nature to unplug. It also means being grateful for the countless privileges and opportunities, friends, experiences, and beauty in life. When we don’t run away from our emotions, we can run toward what we want.

Finding ways to celebrate the positives and to fully experience joy might feel difficult at times in the context of all the suffering in the world and the harm being done by the Trump administration, but cultivating happiness and gratitude, and fully appreciating the good in life can help rejuvenate us to get through harder times.

Join us this summer!

It’s been said that activism is a marathon and not a sprint. We need to find ways to show up as activists as best we can in the short term, but we also need to recognize when we need to step back, especially if we are from a community that is more at risk, when we are going through personal struggles, or when we know that we are pushing ourselves too hard or not getting our own needs met.

When the government doesn’t take care of its people, we need to work extra hard to take care of ourselves, each other, and animals and the planet too. Each of us has an important role to play in bringing about the change we wish to see in the world.

For more tips on strengthening your change-making abilities, download YEA Camp’s free ebook, The Beginner’s Guide to Changing the World. Want to see how we integrate self care with leadership training at camp? Join us this summer at YEA Camp for teens or YEA Camp for Adults.

About the Author: Nora Kramer is the Founder and Director of YEA Camp. She is a long time activist who practices self-care by swimming, playing with her dog, Daiya, and eating vegan ice cream sundaes.

The post A Different Approach to Self-Care for Activists in the Age of Trump appeared first on YEA Camp.

YEA Camp for Adults will be amazing! Join us!

As we prepare for our second year of YEA Camp for Adults, we wanted to share more about its purpose, ways it’s similar but also different from a typical leadership or activism conference or training or retreat, and how it might be the most fun you’ve ever had focusing on self-care, personal growth, and changing the world.

We are living in a time when children are being separated from their families at the border, when those in power are ignoring scientists’ warnings about climate catastrophe, and the richest 26 people in the world currently own the same wealth as the poorer half of the entire global population. These are just a few of the most devastating injustices we are facing.

It’s enough to make a big-hearted person feel totally demoralized, check out, or give up.

But, thankfully, many people who have never been activists before are getting involved and inspired to bring about change.

Seeing this has been incredible! People are attending their first marches and getting involved in politics for the first time. They’re donating money, having uncomfortable conversations to challenge outdated thinking, and on and on.

For the past 10 years, YEA Camp has been training teens to make a bigger difference on the social justice causes they care most about, and we recognize that folks 18 and up have some of the same needs as teens do to get involved at higher levels than ever before.

That’s why we created YEA Camp for Adults.

Check out our new video about YEA Camp for Adults!

Changing the world is hard! Not only does it take knowledge about issues and skills to make an impact, it takes self-confidence to get out of our comfort zone, and community to learn from and work with.

So many people got their start as changemakers by mostly stumbling along without a plan or rationale. It’s often lonely and time-consuming to try things out without much in the way of relevant knowledge, skills, mentorship, or even open conversations with experienced activists to help navigate a path that is inherently entrepreneurial and against the status quo.

Left to our own devices, it’s too easy to just like posts on social media, go to a march every few months, and complain about all of the world’s problems without doing much of anything about them.

That’s where we try to intervene and make a real difference. We leverage the experience of our staff to help kickstart or up-level your activism.

Social Justice Activism and Leadership Training for Aspiring Activists

At YEA Camp, we curate the most foundational concepts and skills that we want to make sure every changemaker has in their toolkit. Things like:

• Fundamental strategies for understanding and chipping away at racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression
• Intersectionality and how different social justice issues relate to one another
• Evaluating our habits and choices to see how our daily actions and purchases can be some of the simplest ways we can make a difference
• Going deeper and examining our limiting beliefs and fears to help us find our voice and tap into our power
• Tapping into our resilience when we feel overwhelmed and demoralized by the state of the world
• Communication skills to help us have more effective interactions with people who we disagree with, especially those in positions of power — and to know when to avoid these interactions
• Skills to inspire others to get involved, to use social media or grassroots outreach effectively, to raise money for your cause, or to launch a socially responsible business or venture
• Interactive activities tailored to different learning styles and to help you apply everything you learn
• Tapping into our creativity and using the existing skills we each have to find our niche and make a difference in a way that is most appropriate for each of us
• Developing strategies to assess the best use of our time, and to make a plan that inspires us

Why A Summer Camp for Activists?

So many reasons! Let’s focus on three.

Join us at YEA Camp for Adults at Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, just outside of New York City.

1. Summer camp brings together the elements of fun, inspiration, and relaxation. As activist-minded people, we can become focused on all the problems in the world. In comparison to so many injustices, it could feel impossible or selfish to enjoy our lives. We hope you’ll see that taking time to be out in nature, be silly, and enjoy life is a long-term investment in your activism. It can help us replenish our energy and inspiration so that we can think clearly and truly be of service to others.

2. Camp inherently challenges us to get out of our comfort zones.

   From meeting new people, to being open to the unknown, to the most basic adjustments to new food and a bed that’s not your own. But as we tap into our courage in a safe environment, we can build a muscle that actually expands the size of our comfort zone. Things that made us nervous before become not so scary, and that is hugely helpful for any activist. With an activist mindset, we see infinite opportunities to take action beyond what we’ve done before, where we’re not sure what to expect, or where we may be opening ourselves up for criticism or perceived failure. We can all benefit by getting more comfortable getting out of our comfort zones.

3. Camp might be the best place in the world to reinvent yourself.

   Most of us spend the majority of our time with the same people.  Our coworkers, family, friends, neighbors, and even ourselves know us to be a certain way. We are a product of our past ways of being and seeing ourselves. But what if we want to re-evaluate who we are or how we want to approach life? What if we want to pursue new passions or set new goals? That can be hard to just wake up and do one day over breakfast or at work.

Being at camp is transformational.

You get to show up as whoever you want to try out being. If you’re naturally shy, what if you try being outgoing? In a welcoming environment where nobody knows you, we won’t even know you’re just trying that out!

This is an opportunity to brainstorm a new way to get involved in your community or a more inspired career. We will have no judgments –just offer support and thoughtful input if you ask for it.

There are conferences and trainings to learn about specific problems in the world or to build specific skills. But they’re usually boring or stuffy, in a sterile hotel conference room all day packed with people you won’t get to know, and with someone droning on to explain a PowerPoint you could have read at home.

But what if you could learn the basics of what you need to know to make a bigger difference while also having one of the most fun weeks of your life, building strong bonds with like-minded supportive people, and spending time in nature rejuvenating yourself so that you feel inspired rather than drained?

That’s YEA Camp!

Details, Please?!

YEA Camp for Adults is a leadership training and activist retreat all held on the grounds of an animal sanctuary!

YEA Camp for Adults is held at the incredible Woodstock Farm Sanctuary — a home for rescued farmed animals who will be some of our hosts and friends as we enjoy our own sanctuary during our time together. We chose June 30-July 6, the week of July 4th, so it will be easier to get away.

We only have 50 beds, so this will be an intimate setting. Everyone will get to know everyone and nobody can fall through the cracks. The accommodations are modern, and we will have a personal vegan chef cooking for us! We also promise you will become friends with creatures with 2 legs, 4 legs, and even wings!

We also offer a sliding scale and financial aid to make it easier for people to be able to come.

If you’re passionate about making a bigger difference in the world, YEA Camp was created with you in mind.

Summer is fast approaching! We hope you will take advantage of this once-a-year opportunity to take your change-making to new heights!

Check out our event page here. And find out more or register to join us this summer by visiting our website here.

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