In Greensboro, a Different Kind of Summer Camp

The first time Tanisha Davis saw the ocean, she was 15. 

It was 2008, and she had just moved to Greensboro with her family from Rhode Island. Before that, Davis had never left her hometown, much less gone to the beach. But that summer changed all of that.

She started going to a local church and made new friends. And it was all thanks to a small summer program run out of her new neighborhood, Glenwood Camp.

“It was my first time doing anything at church or with a summer camp,” Davis said. “It was very fun. I had never been to the beach; I had never traveled outside the city where I had come from. Even having fun at the park, like face painting, going to the pool. It was just having a lot of fun with other kids. It was a blast.”

Over the next few years, Davis attended the camp every summer. She remembers going to Windy Gap, just outside Asheville, and seeing the Battleship North Carolina in Wilmington. Those are days that she looks back on with fondness.

“When the time came, it was like a vacation for us kids to get out of the neighborhood,” she said. “We definitely looked forward to that.”

Now, 17 years later, Davis’s two oldest daughters—Xana, 8, and Xyla, 9—have enrolled in this year’s Glenwood Camp.

While her daughters have been to summer camps in the past, the Glenwood Camp is unique due to its smaller size and affordability. It employs a pay-what-you-can model and prioritizes enrollment for kids from the working-class Glenwood neighborhood and surrounding areas, and is run by people who live and work there. For many of the kids, the camp is their first opportunity to travel outside the city or even go to a pool.

“I’m very excited for them to experience what I experienced and be around people who genuinely care about them and look after them,” Davis said.

‘A Sigh of Relief’

Last month, the early summer heat hung oppressively over everything like a blanket. Some kids played on the blacktop outside of Hope Academy in the Glenwood neighborhood, sweat glistening on their faces. The rest, like five-year-old Juliette, rested under the covered awning at the school’s entrance. 

It was the third day of this year’s summer camp, and the kids were starting to settle into their routines. Friendships were beginning to form, and they were becoming attached to their camp counselors. Juliette, small but vivacious, sat on the top of a stair rail, asking rapid-fire questions.

A few minutes later, Xyla and Xana arrived as their mom pulled up in a van. The two girls sauntered out of the vehicle and quietly took a seat on a bench in the shade. 

Davis’s oldest daughter is on the autism spectrum, she said. It takes her some time to get comfortable around other people. But with the Glenwood Camp, Davis said, she doesn’t have to worry as much about her daughter.

“Relationships are very important,” Davis said. “You don’t want to leave your kids with just anybody. Me being a member of camp before, it’s more easy to do it.”

Dayna Carr is the executive director of Glenwood Together, which runs the camp. As the other kids sat in the shade, she wrangled those who arrived just before noon. It’s a familiar routine for the Glenwood resident who first moved to the neighborhood when she was 19, almost two decades ago.

Carr grew up in Florida and then in Hickory, NC, in a trailer on about 10 acres of rural property.

The early years of her life were marked by food insecurity, substance abuse in the home, and violence, she said. When she moved to Glenwood in 2004, she said, it felt familiar.

“Poverty looks different in different places, but a lot of the outcomes of poverty are the same,” she said. “Glenwood in the early 2000s was a little different than it is now. Things have shifted, but when I moved here, I met a lot of kids that felt very similarly to how I grew up.”

According to federal data collected in 2023, tracts that include a majority of the Glenwood neighborhood show that about 20 percent of the area is made up of single-mother households. That’s significantly higher than the 7.5 percent the same data shows for the Greensboro-High Point metro area and 6.5 percent for the state as a whole. 

Davis is one of those mothers.

She has three daughters—the two in camp this year, plus her three-year-old. A few years ago, she was living in Georgia and paying about $200 per week for her youngest’s child care. Her rent was $1,500 a month, not including utilities. As a single parent, the cost of caring for her kids and maintaining the household was becoming overwhelming. In 2024, she moved back to Greensboro and now lives in Glenwood with her mother, who helps with the children while Davis works as a manager of a Dollar General. Glenwood’s 5-week, half-day camp has been a lifesaver for her.

“To know that the kids are taken care of for a couple of hours, and I don’t have to worry about childcare,” she said. “It’s a sigh of relief.”

The camp operates on a pay-what-you-can model, anywhere from $5 to $20 per family per week. That’s a huge deal given that the average price for daytime summer camp in 2022 for one child was $87, according to data by the American Camp Association.

That’s an insurmountable price tag for many families in Glenwood and surrounding neighborhoods, where about 38 percent live under the poverty line.

“When I saw the camp was pay-what-you-can, I was like, ‘This is amazing,’” Davis said. “I feel like I have a good job, but I also feel like money is tight. So to not have the pressure to pay an arm and a leg every week and for your kids to get to do something in the summer … I’m so grateful.”

Even if parents can’t pay, they never turn a child away, said Grace Heath, a Glenwood Together staff member.

“Our goal is really that any kid who wants to be a part of Glenwood Camp can be a part of Glenwood Camp,” Heath said. “Our goal is never to have a kid who can’t participate because of financial reasons.”

They just ask that families contribute what they think is meaningful. For some, that means using EBT benefits to buy snacks for camp. Others pay more than $50 per week if they can afford it.

For Davis, the model feels community-oriented.

“It makes me know that when I have more to give, I can give,” she said.

A Place Where Kids Can Thrive

The camp was run out of a local church in its early years. They took kids for a week on overnight trips to the mountains or the ocean and to cities like Atlanta or Washington, D.C. For many of the kids, it was their first time seeing any of that, Carr said.

These days, the camp lasts for five weeks, starting in late June, and lasts three hours in the afternoon. The camp runs Monday through Thursday, with Mondays earmarked for field trips and Thursdays for swim breaks at the University of North Carolina Greensboro pool. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the camp is held onsite at either Hope Academy or Glenwood Together for science activities, art projects, community gardening, and outdoor recess.

They try to do a lot of activities within the neighborhood, too, like going to the park or a local music studio. Area field trips have included  Homeland Creamery, Guilford Metro 911, nature preserves, and even the local dump. It’s a way of expanding the kids’ worldview as well as helping them understand their community better.

“I’m a big believer in that old saying that it takes a village to raise a child, but that also means we have to do the work of helping kids know who else is in their village,” Carr said.

This year, the camp was expanded from just older kids aged 10-14 to include rising first through fourth graders. Thirty-five kids are enrolled this summer, with about eight on a waitlist. They like to keep numbers small so campers have a more intimate experience, Carr said.

Most of the campers are Black and brown kids. Creating a safe place for them to thrive is also a core part of Glenwood Camp’s mission, Carr said.

In one instance, the camp enrolled a child who had attended a different sleep-away camp where someone’s earbuds had been stolen.

“Everyone immediately looked at the poor Black kid that was there, and it was a really uncomfortable experience for them,” Carr said. 

In the end, the culprit turned out to be a different child altogether.

“There was no grounding for that, and the kid didn’t feel safe there anymore,” Carr said. “The reality is there are not a lot of camps that are abundantly safe for kids from our neighborhood … We want a place where these kids can thrive and are loved and not be under a microscope.”

Forming Friendships

At lunch, Je’Sean, 13, and Andre, 12, sat next to each other in Hope Academy’s cafeteria. Je’Sean had been coming to camp for about two years, while this was Andre’s fifth time. Their favorite parts of the experience are that they are surprised by what they get to do every year. They like the games and enjoy the field trips every Monday.

Although the two both live in Greensboro, they don’t live close enough to see each other regularly. Most years, they only get to hang out for the five weeks during the camp. It’s where they’ve gotten close and built their friendship. 

Tiffani, 9, sat at a different table and explained how they made tie-dye shirts on Tuesday. She was excited to see the final product. Her favorite part has been the pizza outings. Johan, 10, who sat nearby, likes going to the pool every week. Dylan, 7, likes that he gets to play basketball. His favorite players are Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

Many campers come every year,  allowing them to build friendships like Je’Sean and Andre’s, said Heath.

“A lot of summer camps, kids are meeting each other for the first time,” she said. “They have a few weeks together, and then they never see each other again. I think our camp is just really special because the kids have a fun, engaging place to continue their relationship over the summer.”

Davis said she’s enjoyed watching her daughters build relationships and have fun in the summer, just like she did when she was young. When next year rolls around, she said she would make time to ensure her daughters can attend camp again.

“I will work around my work schedules to make sure they get there,” Davis said. “Cause them having fun is important, too.”

Sayaka Matsuoka is a Greensboro-based reporter for The Assembly. She was formerly the managing editor for Triad City Beat.

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