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Libra Foundation Ends Scholarships for Summer Campers

January 26, 2010 - PORTLAND -- A scholarship program that has covered the cost of summer camp for tens of thousands of Maine children during the past decade will be shut down after the upcoming season.

Owners of some Maine summer camp programs say they may be forced to close as a result.

The Summer Champs camp scholarship program was launched in 1999 by the Libra Foundation. It has offered scholarships of up to $1,000 to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders in Lewiston, Bangor and Portland public schools to attend camp in Maine. The foundation will shift its focus to other philanthropic endeavors that have yet to be determined, President Owen Wells said Tuesday.

The Libra Foundation, established by the late Elizabeth B. Noyce, will have spent $30 million on the camp scholarship program by the time it ends. It was never intended to be permanent, Wells said.

"We want to look at some other things," he said.

The Libra Foundation has contributed more than $144 million to numerous Maine causes and institutions since it was founded in 1989, according to the foundation's Web site. Recipients have ranged from educational and environmental groups to church funds and local libraries, as well as numerous youth programs. Grants last year totaled $8.4 million.

The popular camp program began with $1,000 scholarships to children in Lewiston regardless of family income. It expanded to Portland and Bangor the following year. Since its inception, 33,542 children have taken advantage of the scholarships.

In Portland, more than 87 percent of eligible students have used the scholarships over the course of the program, compared with 78 percent in Bangor and 74 percent in Lewiston.

Losing the funding will have a big impact on summer camps, educators and camping officials said. A number of camping programs that were started to take advantage of the Libra funding will probably close.

"It will leave a considerable void for our day-camp communities," said Garth Altenburg, president of the Maine Youth Camping Association and boy's camp director at Camp Chewonki in Wiscasset.

Summer Champs was the brainchild of Wells, who said he grew up in a family that couldn't afford camp. As he traveled around the country, he came to appreciate how the Maine camp experience has benefited the out-of-staters who descend every year on overnight camps along Maine's shorelines.

"The experience out-of-staters had coming to Maine was something we wanted to replicate through the Libra Foundation," Wells said.

Wells envisioned thousands of schoolchildren attending overnight camp, but many families chose to use the scholarships for day camps instead, triggering the creation of dozens of new day programs devoted to science, art, gymnastics, surfing and other activities.

"Clearly it created a very vibrant economic engine," said Meg Baxter, president of the United Way of Greater Portland, which administered the program along with United Way chapters in Lewiston and Bangor.

Tim Cronin, a former teacher at King Middle School in Portland, founded the Summer Fun Camp with a friend in 2002. As many as 80 children a session would spend two weeks enjoying activities such as kayaking, hiking, biking and boating.

Cronin said that when Libra cut back the scholarships to $500 per student last summer, it became clear the camp would no longer be sustainable and he canceled it for 2010. He said his campers were exposed to experiences they may not have had otherwise.

"It will be a considerable loss," Cronin said.

The long-term benefit for participants of Summer Champs is unclear. No formal research was conducted after an initial $75,000 outlay on one study that became too expensive to continue, Wells said.

But he said he has received many letters of thanks, "which obviously is very satisfying."

Wells said the foundation, which has seen its endowment bounce back after the economic meltdown, will spend the next year looking for other philanthropic possibilities. The foundation also funds other youth-related programs such as Raising Readers, which supplies books to all children born in Maine, and the Maine Winter Sports Center, a Caribou-based organization that supports children's skiing programs across the state.

Tom Doherty, executive director of Camp Ketcha in Scarborough, said about 35 children have attended the camp on Summer Champs scholarships each summer. The program helped Maine families discover the value of summer camping, Doherty said. He said Camp Ketcha is stepping up its own scholarship efforts to help fill the void.

"We have to figure out another way to do it," Doherty said.

Some Portland parents said the program will be greatly missed.

"I am so disappointed," said Mufalo Chitam, whose 11-year-old daughter, Grace, has been attending camp through the Summer Champs program for two years.

Chitam said Grace has attended basketball camp at Catherine McAuley High School, a religious camp and a gymnastics camp. The family could never have afforded them alone, she said.

"It did help us a lot," she said.

By BETH QUIMBY, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, January 20, 2010


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