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Needs and Money Money is a strategy for meeting needs. We find that remembering this can help us keep financial issues in perspective. Your family has various needs that it hopes to meet, using money as a strategy, and you also have needs that you might enjoy meeting by attending Family HEART Camp. We, the organizers of the camp, also have needs that we hope to meet by offering the camp, and through receiving money. Our understanding is that everyone's needs matter, and our needs are often interrelated. It is important to us that you meet your needs and that we meet ours, and that we approach figuring out how to do this with a sense of partnership. We would like you to know what some relevant needs of ours are as organizers of the camp: - Contribution to the well-being of families and the quality of relationship and life experienced by parents and children.
- Contribution to creating the sort of world we most enjoy living in.
- Creating community, and an experience of fun, learning, and love.
- Inclusion of as many families as possible, regardless of their financial circumstances.
- Financial sustainability, so that we can afford to go on doing this work that we love and value, offer scholarships, and offer additional camps to families in future years.
- Mutuality – a sense that we are all contributing
We invite you to consider both your needs and ours as you think about paying for camp. Options We would like to make it possible for any family that wants to come to Family HEART Camp to attend. To this end, we have sought to keep the cost of attending as low as we can, while offering a powerful and enjoyable experience. Even so, we recognize that some families may find it challenging to afford to participate. We would like to offer some possible strategies for addressing finances. You might: - Take advantage of an early bird discount and/or the discount for recruiting another family.
- Opt for an extended payment plan.
- Do personal fundraising. (Before saying "No way!" please read the section below.)
- Do work-exchange while at the camp.
- Request a scholarship.
These possibilities are discussed in more detail in the sections below. We would love for you to be able to attend, and hope that in most cases we will be able to come up with a mutually agreeable arrangement. Expenses such as room and board are less flexible than those related to programming, so we ask participants to contribute this portion if at all possible, even if over time. You might consider that you will have to pay for food for your family whether or not you come to the camp, and you probably would not be eating local organic meals prepared fresh for you. As you consider your personal financial situation and the options we provide for alternative financial arrangements, please keep in mind that we are more likely to be able to fulfill scholarship and work-exchange requests if you are willing to cover at least 50% of the total cost of the camp. Personal Fundraising If you think you cannot afford to pay full price to attend the camp, we want to urge you to consider the possibility of personal fundraising. We realize that this idea may be scary, perhaps so scary as to seem out of the question at first. Most of us are not used to asking for help in meeting our needs. However, when done with the “consciousness” of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), this sort of asking can be both effective and surprisingly empowering. For some families who have done personal fundraising to attend the Washington State Family Camp, the results were so enjoyable that others who knew them were inspired to do the same thing the next year, so that they too could attend.
Some keys to asking for help using NVC consciousness include: - Paint a vision of what it will do for you if you are able to attend Family HEART Camp—how you feel when you think about it, and what needs you expect it to meet for you and your family, perhaps even for those your family will subsequently interact with.
- Identify this as an opportunity to help make your life more wonderful.
- Make it clear that “yes” and “no” are both good answers to your request, and that you want a “yes” only if it can be offered with joy, and that if there is any sense of doing so out of a sense of obligation you would prefer a “no”. (When you value a relationship, as you likely do with anyone you would ask for support, it’s generally important to do only things that will add to the quality of the relationship, and these guidelines help ensure that either answer, honestly given, will contribute to the relationship.)
The preceding provides the basics of what you need to know to ask for financial help from family, friends, or others. You might also want to read the suggestions about personal fundraising on Washington NVC Family Camp page on Camp, NVC and Money. If you need some coaching on how to ask in an NVC way, please let us know. Work Exchange We have some work-exchange opportunities for those who cannot cover full payment even with the payment plan and personal fundraising. Specifically, we need people to help with meal preparation and cleanup and people to assist with the children’s program. There may also be other roles that you might play to help support the functioning of the camp.
Meal preparation: There is no prior experience required to participate in kitchen support work-exchange (other than the willingness to do it).
Children’s program: Our intention is that the children’s program will be an environment in which NVC is lived and experienced through daily interactions. With this in mind, for the children's program work-exchange positions we will consider people who have a level of NVC skills and experience that we are comfortable with. In addition we would value prior experience of working with children and a sense of personal satisfaction and enjoyment in working with children. Other roles: If you have any specialized skills that may be relevant to helping the camp function well, please let us know, and we may be able to create a work-exchange opportunity that would use those skills.You could also let us know if you have an interest in being considered for any other as yet unidentified work exchange roles that may not require specialized skills. Both kitchen support and children program work-exchange options mean that you will miss a significant amount of the adult program while engaging in your work-exchange tasks. This is especially true for those working in the children's program, who are likely to miss around 50% of the adult program. Participating in work-exchange would help us run the camp and support a sense of mutuality--you and us both doing our part. Scholarships
We hope to be able to offer some scholarships without work-exchange, depending on our ability to raise funds to support these scholarships, and on the number of families attending who are able to pay the full cost. Application for Alternative Financial Arrangements Once you have read and considered the information on this page, you are ready to complete the online Application for Alternative Financial Arrangements. If you have any remaining questions, please
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