While we’re proud of Liberty Lake Day Camp’s 60 acres of shady coverage, and our diverse selection of activities, our most important asset is a human one: our team. It’s easy to get caught up in outdoing ourselves each season with new programming (like Beekeeping!) and physical challenges galore (like High Ropes Adventure and the Tower of Power). But the greatest summertime adventure happens when our staff interacts with your child and fosters genuine relationships.
Our “endless summer” creates personal bonds of unbelievable influence. Kids are impressionable. They can be swayed to take certain paths on the road to adulthood. We hold ourselves responsible for gaining our campers’ trust. It’s fun to have fun, but we don’t joke about youth development.
We put enormous time and energy into building a team of Group Leaders, Specialists, Division Leaders, and Counselors who will do right by your child. We expect our team members to be superstars who generate results (emotional, intellectual, and athletic) and return year after year. Liberty Lake has a reputation as one of the highest-paying camps in the southern/central New Jersey region. And at least half of our team members are former campers!
But we don’t hire young teens as CITs or Counselors. Our leadership-training program focuses on mentoring young people whom we challenge to “get a job” by applying for it. That’s right: We don’t promise anyone a job—we make them earn it. Dang, don’t we sound like someone’s parents?!? Because we cultivate our own bounty of future team members, we absorb them whole into the Liberty Lake philosophy (don’t worry, their brains are still intact). They “pay it forward” by becoming the next generation of Counselors and Group Leaders.
Our quest to secure the best and brightest camp professionals is a sacred one during the off-season. Just having a pulse and a winsome smile isn’t enough to qualify as a Liberty Lake team member. Our screening process involves challenging job-interview questions, contacting all provided references, and thorough background checks. This exhaustive process results in us hiring team members who do much more than help kids play kickball or draw pictures. Our Counselors and Specialists are youth-development professionals that foster an atmosphere of trust and respect, promote learning and trying new experiences.
We challenge you to find another day camp in the area that provides its year-round and summer team members with quality off-season and in-season professional development. It’s to our advantage that Liberty Lake’s owner, Andy Pritikin, is a veteran organizer of the American Camp Association’s Tri-State Camp Conference, the largest global gathering of camp professionals, and best practices.
When camp is in season, our Division Leaders function as mini-versions of Andy. They mentor their Counselors, are responsible for all communication with parents, and function as our critical liaisons regarding weekly camper reports. And because our Division Leaders take on this concierge-like role, we hone their skills by bringing in external professionals to train them (and other team members) via a series of dinner meetings throughout the off-season. Now you know why one of Liberty Lake’s favorite sayings is “we work 10 (months) for 2.”