Camp Fire
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| Headquarters | Kansas City, Missouri | ||
| Country | United States | ||
| Founded | informally 1910; formally March 17, 1912 | ||
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| Membership | 200,000 | ||
| Nation Board Chair | Liz Darling | ||
| President/CEO | Cathy Tisdale | ||
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Website campfire.org |
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Camp Fire, formerly Camp Fire USA (originally "Camp Fire Girls of America"), is a secular co-ed inclusive youth development organization. Camp Fire was the first nonsectarian, multicultural organization for girls in America. Its programs emphasize camping and other outdoor activities for youth.
Its informal roots extend back to 1910, with efforts by Mrs. Charles Farnsworth in Thetford, Vermont and Luther Gulick M.D. and his wife Charlotte Vedder Gulick on Sebago Lake, near South Casco, Maine. Camp Fire Girls, as it was known at the time, was created as the sister organization to the Boy Scouts of America. The organization changed its name in 1975 to Camp Fire Boys and Girls when membership eligibility was expanded to include boys. In 2001, the name Camp Fire USA was adopted, and in 2012 it became Camp Fire.
Camp Fire's programs, including small group experiences, after-school programs, camping and environmental education, child care and service learning, build confidence in younger children and provide hands-on, youth driven leadership experiences for older youth.
In 1910, young girls in Thetford, Vermont, watched their brothers, friends, and schoolmates – all Boy Scouts – practice their parts in the community's 150th anniversary, which would be celebrated the following summer. The pageant's organizer, William Chauncey Langdon, promised the girls that they, too, would have an organized role in the pageant, although no organization such as Boy Scouts existed then for girls. Langdon consulted with Mrs. Charles Farnsworth, preceptress of Horace Mann School near Thetford, Vermont. Both approached Luther Halsey Gulick M.D. about creating a national organization for girls. Gulick introduced the idea to friends, among them G. Stanley Hall, Ernest Thompson Seton, and James West, executive secretary of the Boy Scouts. After many discussions and help from Gulick and his wife Charlotte, Langdon named the group of Thetford girls the Camp Fire Girls.
In 1907, the Gulicks had established Camp WoHeLo, a camp for girls, on Lake Sebago, near South Casco, Maine. There were seventeen WoHeLo maidens at the camp in the summer of 1910. Both the Vermont group and the Maine group would lead to the creation of the organization formally organized as Camp Fire Girls in 1912.
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Wikipedia