PALS Blog

The 2021 summer season has officially come to a close and what a wild year we had! In the midst of the most unprecedented and unpredictable times, we had the opportunity to safely connect more than 900 people at 12 in-person and 1 virtual program across the country.

In preparation for summer 2022, PALS staff are working hard towards accreditation for all of our programs with the American Camp Association (ACA). The ACA is ”a community of camp professionals who, for over 100 years, have joined together to share our knowledge and experience and to ensure the quality of camp programs.”

My grandma’s “Why PALS” is because PALS provides a wonderful place for families that just had a new baby and continues to support the family as the child grows up through camp experiences even during the pandemic. For five years, Sandi has seen the power PALS has had on our family.

In September, we focused on the topic of Critical Race Theory which is getting a lot of attention in the news this year. When I told a friend I was going into a meeting about Critical Race Theory, she asked, what do you mean by that? Which was a great question! I paused to try and break the concept down into its core parts, and to help remove the noise around the concept that has filled our media zeitgeist this year.

The 2021 summer season has officially come to a close and what a wild year we had! In the midst of the most unprecedented and unpredictable times, we had the opportunity to safely connect more than 900 people at 12 in-person and 1 virtual program across the country.

Shining light on situations like these help us all to know where we have room for growth. At PALS, we realize how important it is to continue to do this kind of work. By sharing my story, I hope it helps to prevent things like this from happening in the future. At the end of the day no one is perfect, but we must all do our part to understand one another and to make sure we are providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone which PALS is focused on doing year round.

As we inspire a world of belonging at PALS and within the local communities we serve, we are so grateful to team up with partners who contribute to the mission of our organization. We would especially like to thank the Casino Night team at PALS Philadelphia.

We often ask members of our PALS Family "Why PALS?" to learn how our mission has impacted their lives. In this month's email, we asked Camp PALS LA Director Erin Parish to share about her experience leading the new LA program and why it's important to PALS' long-term growth. Here’s her story!

We often ask members of our PALS Family "Why PALS?" to learn how our mission has impacted their lives. In 2019, camper parent Kim Spotts held a successful fundraiser for PALS, raising more than $3,000 from friends and family. Here’s her story!

PALS is committed to increasing access to our programs so that more people from diverse backgrounds have the opportunity to experience the magic of PALS. However, in order to do this, it is important that we consider not only one identity such as gender or race, but other identities such as age, class, religion, and combinations of these identities and other identities and their impacts as we grow.

A group of students from Salesianum School, in Delaware, created fundraising pages for PALS and raised $2,495. Thank you so much to Kian, Evan, Ryan, Dylan, Connor, Abel, and Joseph for your fundraising efforts! We asked them to reflect on their experience and why they decided to fundraising for PALS as high school students. Here is what Connor and Kian shared on behalf of the group.

We invited a handful of our top fundraisers to share their tips and tricks on fundraising for PALS!

The reality of my life is that it’s very hard to find a place that accepts me with everything I offer. So finding PALS and deciding to become heavily involved has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

At PALS, we believe in our mission of inspiring a more inclusive world of belonging, and one way we work towards this is The Congratulations Project.