Ella Sorscher

Camp Interactive

Most afternoons after work, the eight other employees and I at Camp Interactive (CI) would close our computers, shoulder our backpacks, and make the trek as a team down to the subway station. Strangers half-joking and half-surprised told us we looked like an after-school special—so many different kinds of people from such disparate social, economic, and cultural backgrounds—skipping, running, and pushing our way down the street past spitting air conditioning systems and under train tracks. We were an eclectic and young group of self-proclaimed entrepreneurs—the creative energy overwhelming sometimes to the point of distraction. We were a haphazard family—rough around the edges and imperfect, but friends.

Ella Sorscher and CampInteractive Community

Ella Sorscher and CampInteractive Community

Camp Interactive is the epitome of a small mom-and-pop shop. This environment was new and unexpected in a city so famously hostile as New York, but was necessary to the kids Camp Interactive served. Nestled in the belly of a Section 8 apartment building in the Bronx, CI’s bright blue and orange door, was CI’s welcome sign to the outside world. Once a Laundromat, then a crack den, and now a non-profit program center for young adults, the space was multi-functional and open. While the city’s businesses, residences, and inhabitants overgrow the physical capacity of New York City and constantly push the envelope of its economy, CampInteractive has changed to fit the time and need of its community. Over the past two years, it has developed into more than an afterschool STEM—science, education, mathematics, and technology—center.  Middle and high school students come to the CI program center to learn how to function in today’s technology workforce. They write code, design apps, and learn entrepreneurial skills to not only function but also thrive in the most quickly growing workforce in New York City.

Camp Interactive uses its connections to some of the most influential tech startups in the city—GroupMe, FourSquare, Google, and Skype—and across the United States to provide its students with opportunities to both meet and work with the most successful people in the field. The dynamic between New York’s wealthiest as board members and philanthropists and the young adults CI serves could have created a chasm between the haves and have-nots, but instead created a community of co-learners.

This summer I learned that “Youth Outreach” is at its most potent and influential when it creates a safe and personal environment to nurture the population it serves. Camp Interactive owes its success to the personal and honest relationships it fosters with the students and supporters–opening doors between both communities and connecting them in vibrant and creative ways.

 

Ella Sorscher is a member of the class of 2014.

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