Thanks go to the parents for entrusting us with your children. To the campers, I have to say that I was really impressed with the friendliness and politeness you displayed. It was refreshingly awesome.

While the summer was successful, with the majority of the campers thoroughly enjoying their stay with us, we want to do better! In order to accomplish this, each camper completed a survey on Friday night at dinner. As a follow-up, we also e-mailed all of the parents after their child’s stay with a survey and received a healthy 539 responses. Thank you.

It is important that we listen to the consumers and customers of the Camp. We want the Camp experience to improve. We want the Camp to grow.

Before my first summer at Hermann Sons Life Camp I spoke with many parents, grandparents and staff. Based on those conversations, we made some changes.

Some of the biggest changes were:

•    Arrival day was streamlined.
•    More photographs were posted online for the parents.
•     We added a second evening activity to bring the boys and girls together (Game Night).
•    We converted the Hilltop Dining Hall to cafeteria-style with the campers sitting by dorm with their counselors.

Your feedback will help us steer the Camp forward and hopefully improve the quality of the summer camp experience for both the campers and parents.

Camp is an important part of Hermann Sons Life. It has been awesome to meet the many parents and grandparents who attended Camp and are experiencing Camp again through their children and grandchildren.

Traditions are important, however there does need to be an understanding that the children of today are not the same as they were in the 60s, 70s and 80s. We need to provide a Camp that they want.

So what are some of the results of the surveys?

The campers and parents were asked to rate several categories on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being the worst and 5 being the best.

Overall Camp Experience

•    The campers rated the Camp a 4.55/5.00.
•    The parents rated the Camp a 4.43/5.00.

Evening Activities

•     The campers rated the evening activities a 4.58/5.00.
•     The parents rated the evening activities a 4.42/5.00.

The Counselors

•    The campers rated their counselors a 4.70/5.00.
•    The parents rated the counselors a 4.58/5.00.

The Food

•    The campers rated the food a 4.24/5.00.
•    The parents rated the food a 3.99/5.00.

Below you will find other results from the camper surveys about Camp, the activities, the food and the counselors.

I’m currently reading every parent survey. I will be calling a number of parents to discuss their surveys (as requested). As we proceed through the off-season, we will be bringing you updates on the 2020 summer Camp experience.

Some changes that we will be looking into:

• The Board approved the purchase of a bus. The bus helped with transportation of campers for both the Dance and Game Night. Moving forward, it will also help with transportation of the campers to and from Challenge and Climbing and it also opens up the possibility of adding Fishing and Canoeing to the schedule for the boys.

• Based on an overwhelming response to our parent survey (more than 80 percent), we will be allowing 14-year-olds to attend Camp starting in 2020. This will require some tweaking to the beads given however, we are excited to allow campers to enjoy another summer at Hermann Sons Life Camp. This will also allow us as a Camp staff to talk to (and evaluate) the 14-year-olds about joining our counselor-in-training program.

• We will be working on Riverside Camp and spending capital and labor improving the bathrooms/showers.

• We will be tweaking the application process for counselors-in-training for the 2020 Camp season. More information will be forthcoming soon to all eligible campers.

• We are looking into a variety of tweaks to further improve the parental experience including an app for sharing photographs during the summer, the hiring of a designated photographer to improve the quality and quantity of photographs, making the health form an online fillable form, and more.

I would again like to visit as many lodge meetings as possible during the off-season. I enjoyed meeting the parents, grandparents and campers. I can be reached at 830-995-3223.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first summer at Hermann Sons Life Camp and look forward to many more.