Published: 12/01/2025 - 8:00 AM
Dingmans Ferry, PA — Monday, 12/01/25 — Camp Speers YMCA has been awarded a $10,000 grant by the Robert H. Spitz Foundation, administered by Scranton Area Community Foundation. The grant will fund outdoor environmental education for local elementary schoolchildren onsite at the historic sleepaway camp.
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.
WHY IT MATTERS:
- Research shows environmental education provides significant benefits:
- Environmental education has been tied to better student performance in science, math, and reading.
- It also correlates with a 46% improvement in health-related quality of life.
- Environmental education leads to increased connectedness to nature and pro-social behavior in children.
- Exposure to these subjects also opens career paths in education, museums, NGOs.
“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,” says 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.
REFERENCES:
https://lloydcenter.org/exploring-the-benefits-of-environmental-education-for-children/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32440617/
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648458/full
https://leadthechange.bard.edu/blog/what-can-i-do-with-a-masters-in-environmental-education