Wonder Girls camp spots still available
Jun. 27—The deadline to register for the seventh edition of Wonder Girls Camp has been extended.
Organized by Crisis Center of West Texas, Wonder Girls Camp will run from July 10-14 at Crossroads Student Building, 6901 State Highway 191 Frontage Road.
Drop off is at 8 a.m. and pick up starts each afternoon at 4:45 p.m. Limited scholarships are available for Wonder Girls who qualify, the Crisis Center newsletter said.
"We're aiming to have 50 campers," Director of Education and Partnerships Hannah Horick said.
The number of campers is tied for the most they've had.
"We went a little smaller last year and I think we're going back up to about where we capped out a couple of years ago," Horick said.
They will bring back kickboxing and offer Crisis Center lessons on self-esteem and other tools to try and build their confidence and overall success.
They're also bringing back an organization from El Paso that they have worked with before that brings in all their STEM activities.
The organization brings in a team of young people that works directly with the girls.
"We divide the girls up into teams so they're all going to work together on different projects and we're really excited. On Thursday (July 13), we'll have a robotics competition," Horick said.
She added that she thinks it's critical to have a camp like this where girls can be together, build friendships and "embrace all the fun things about being a middle school girl, but also be in a really STEM-friendly environment where they're going to get supported and know that they can have just as much access to that kind of information as they do to any other kind of more stereotypically accessible forms of activities that young women get exposed to."
Horick said they hope it will also help the girls with STEM when they go back to school.
"I hope the camp makes them more excited about things like math or science when they get back on to their campuses in August," she added.
The Crisis Center training also is important because of the high risk of things like dating violence.
"We see that some of the survivors at the highest risk are young women between of the ages 14 and 25 when it comes to intimate partner violence. So getting in and having these conversations about relationships and respect and love in advance of that and building those good foundations before they get to high school I think is really valuable," Horick said.
They have had girls come back to serve as assistant team leaders, like a camp counselor, once they have aged out of being a camper.
"It's been really cool to have some continuity with the girls who come back over and over again," Horick said.
Wonder Girls is still looking for campers and people in the community interested in supporting the program as a volunteer, camp counselor, or even with a meal or donation.
"We're always looking for new individuals and organizations to partner with the camp," Horick said.
