Camp — Craftsbury, Vermont
Sept. 29 - Oct. 6, 2024
Footprints partners with the Craftsbury Outdoor Center to bring our unique events to the northeast
The Craftsbury Outdoor Center is a non-profit dedicated to “sports, sustainability, & stewardship.” Their cutting-edge training facilities support elite and recreational athletes across many sports, and every aspect of the facility has been informed by a sustainability mindset.
A Footprints camp at Craftsbury brings our proven methodology to their facility to provide a rewarding and meaningful experience to runners looking to lead their communities in climate action.
Among the spectacular colors of fall in northern Vermont, you’ll come together with other runners for a week of bonding, building meaningful personal connections, and developing measurable and impactful climate action projects. In the mornings we run; then we spend the afternoons and evenings workshopping participants’ projects through immersive, collaborative sessions.
Camaraderie
We emphasize creating a space for people to build and strengthen connections over almost everything else. Bringing an exceptional group of people together for several uninterrupted days of living and working together helps our participants and mentors alike feel supported and respected. It’s a beautiful thing.
Climate action
Each afternoon we spend several hours building business plans and strategy for participants’ projects through a varied mixture of hands-on workshop sessions. The sessions are designed to build on each other, and challenge participants to work with each other and their mentors individually, in small groups, and collectively as a single large group. The sessions are thought-provoking, challenging, and above all, fun. We aim to find the upper limit of how much fun you can have while doing darn good work. (hint: it’s a lot)
Belonging
There’s something magical about being surrounded for a week by passionate people who want to see you succeed. We foster deep conversations and real connections, and the woods of northern Vermont are the perfect place to become your best self. The Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s cafeteria offers healthy and filling food to keep you going through a week of running and climate work. Time and again, this emphasis on creating the space for people to connect is one of the greatest highlights we hear from alumni. Together, we can go far.
Workshop session highlight
One hour-long session we run encourages thinking about how to communicate a project to distinctly different audiences. Here, participants choose a single specific goal in their project. Then, they identify three important stakeholders who feel markedly different from each other but need to be convinced to take some action in service of the goal. The participants develop a message for each stakeholder, using whatever marketing channels they think will be effective.
After presenting and discussing the messaging in small groups, we challenge the participants in the final ten minutes of the session: create a 30-second video for one of the stakeholder groups with a clear goal and message informed by that audience. Lastly, we bring everyone together to compare the videos and discuss how they demonstrate tailoring messages to different audiences as well as any other takeaways the participants felt.
The application period will open in mid-May 2024 and last for six weeks. We will announce dates as soon as possible!
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Ready to apply?
If you’d like a refresher on the types of projects we’re looking for, check out the Projects page