Trend: Reality (TV) Camps

Forget about swimming or playing golf: While adults train their survival skills in camps with “Fear Factor”, parents are sending their kids to “Money Camp”.

Trend Description:
Summer Camps were always big in the US, as were retreats for employees and managers. But it is not only about fun, recreation, and team-building anymore. Business people and management students are crowding into wilderness survival camps, which offer more than outdoor skills and romantic camp fires. At the new survival camps participants have to deal with “life or death” situations, inspired by reality-shows like “Lost” or “Survivor”. But not only manager-retreats are changing. More and more parents are worrying less about their kid’s sportive talent, but more about real-life skills. At “Money Camps” children as young as eight years old start to learn how to make the “real deal”.

Cases:

Wilderness Survival camps with “Fear-Factor”
Wilderness Survival camps have existed since long before “Crocodile Dundee”. While the purpose of traditional schools was to train people about teambuilding, tracking, making fires without matches, edible plants and orientation in the wilderness, now the “fantasy” (or if you want “nightmare”) part is becoming more and more important. Of course: Most participants are not incited by some outdoor-experience but by reality-shows like “Lost” or “Survivor”. Themes range from surviving hypothetical plane crashes to hunting down guerillas. Camps can cost from a few hundred dollars for a two-day class to a few thousand dollars for month long adventures. The Boulder Outdoor Survival School pick their students up from the airport and will find themselves “Lost” in the desert for their training. The Tracker School in Waretown, NJ, teaches students how to use Native American tracking and evading techniques in urban settings, also using SWAT training facilities.

Business Camp
While adults get more and more imaginative and adventurous, parents want their kids to get down to business. Instead of learning swimming or playing tennis, more and more kids spend their summer vacation learning about money and finances. The Money Camp already has locations in California, Alberta, North Carolina and Mexico City. For $260 a week the children learn about basic economics, budgeting, how the stock market works and how to run a small business. Using accelerate teaching techniques the teachers try to make the topic as much fun as possible. Kids can get started at an age as young as 8. At Millionaire Kids Camp in Texas they will learn sales and handling money through role play. For older kids there are programs which teach the value of money in preparation for buying a car or going to college. Julian Krinsky Camps and Programs feature nearly all kinds of sports, arts and enrichment programs as well as a variety of business camps, teaching management, technology and leadership skills.

Mountain Shepherd Wilderness Survival School

The Tracker

The Money Camp

Millionaire Kids Camp

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