For many years, Camp Michigania hosted a volunteer weekend where many of our loyal and most dedicated campers came up to help us do some necessary work to get ready for the summer season. We have appreciated the many hours of intensive work that has resulted in projects that truly helped at camp. Recently, we had to have some conversations about this volunteer weekend, and various factors have led us to move it and scale it back significantly. The two main factors were:

• Level of work that can be done: For many years, we were able to have campers do very complicated work, such as roofing, building sheds, woodwork, electrical work, etc. We are unable to have that level of work done due to liability issues, and we don’t have much of that type of work remaining anymore. The most valuable things for us are landscaping, painting, and other tasks that help us make camp beautiful prior to summer.
• Calendar for summer and staff training: We had to move our whole summer schedule up by a week when the University of Michigan changed the start of classes to before Labor Day. This has pushed our staff training up so that a lot of staff arrive during Memorial Day weekend. Last year, it was a very clunky experience to have staff training happening at the same time that our volunteers were there. Our focus was divided, and we want to ensure that we focus on the volunteers and projects during that time.

We will be reaching out to a group of volunteers who have been coming to Work Weekend for a significant amount of time to give them the opportunity to join us for a modified experience that will happen on a weekend before Memorial Day weekend. We are, again, truly thankful for everyone who has helped and who has offered to help in the past.