A new year-long program helps campers bring the confidence of camp home
Most kids who arrive at Camp Footprint have never met another person with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease. They’re usually the only one with CMT in their school or in their town, navigating life with a progressive disease most people cannot name. But when they step off that camp bus for the first time, every person they see knows exactly what life with CMT is like.
A week at Camp Footprint changes lives. The question has always been how to make it last until the next summer rolls around.
Now, with a two-year, $150,000 grant from the American Camp Association (ACA) Character at Camp initiative — a program to build character and leadership skills at camps across the country — the CMTA is building a bridge between that one week and the rest of the year.
The Footprint Fellowship: Bringing Camp Magic Home is a year-long leadership and character-development program for Camp Footprint campers and counselors ages 10–18. The first program cohort, composed of 22 campers and 13 counselors, began meeting in January 2026. A second cohort of campers and counselors will start January 2027.
Camp Footprint was one of 77 camps selected from nearly 600 applicants. For a camp that didn’t exist a decade ago, the selection is a national recognition of Camp Footprint’s quality programming.
Camp Footprint: Fun first, CMT second
Camp Footprint is the only camp in the United States created for children and teens with CMT. It runs two one-week sessions each summer, one in Oregon and one in Pennsylvania, serving more than 160 campers from across the country. Camper-to-counselor ratios run from 3:1 to 1:1, and most counselors live with CMT themselves. The cost for kids to attend Camp Footprint is $0, supported by generous donations from the CMTA community.
The programming mixes the usual camp fun — swimming, hiking, campfires, ropes courses, talent shows — with traditions built around CMT identity. For example, Foot Time is a nightly ritual with twinkle lights, Epsom salt foot soaks, and counselor-led conversations about living with CMT. At Foot Time, no one needs to explain “why” — why they wear braces, why they’re tired all the time, why they need another surgery. Everyone already knows. The conversation starts at “how.” How are you coping with it? How is your life impacted? How are you feeling?
The Four Toes of our Funky Foot
The fellowship is built around Camp Footprint’s character pillars, known as the “Four Toes of our Funky Foot,” which include authenticity, community, empowerment, and spirit. The Funky Foot name comes from the camp logo, which was designed with only four toes. What started as a mistake became a badge of pride. Campers now call themselves the “Tribe of the Funky Feet.”
Footprint Fellows meet virtually once a month with peers and Camp Footprint staff. Each quarter focuses on one of the four pillars, and the year builds toward real-world application of lessons learned from each pillar.
The fellowship starts with identity: who are you at camp versus who are you at home? Fellows work through a tool called the Flip Tree, where they reframe real-life fears into “camp truths.” A fear like, “At school, I worry people stare when I wear my leg braces,” gets flipped to, “At camp, I wear them proudly because everyone sees me as the fun, confident person I am.” The goal is to close the gap between camp-self and home-self.
From there, fellows learn to tell their own CMT story and build a plan to share it in their classrooms, churches, and community groups, or through social media. Completed projects go into a Fellowship resource library that future cohorts and CMTA programs can draw from.
When summer comes, fellows put it what they learned in practice at Camp Footprint itself. They co-plan and lead a day of programming to teach campers and staff how to bring the camp magic home. Each fellow also mentors a first-time camper, reaching out before camp begins and staying connected during the week.
By the end of the year, fellows document what worked in a professionally produced video and a “Bring Camp Home” toolkit designed for other camps to replicate the model. Graduating fellows become mentors for the next cohort.
The Fellowship Box
Every participant receives a Footprint Fellowship Box with journals, activity cards, reflection prompts, storytelling templates, the Flip Tree, and additional items to guide monthly activities, celebrate their CMT identity, and bring the magic of camp closer the other 51 weeks of the year.
The Dream Behind the Camp Footprint Fellowship
By Jonah Berger
When we first learned of this grant, our heads were full of ways to make camp even better. Think of the razzle dazzle we could add! There is so much work to be done, so much we can do.
But we thought about it differently.
There is something about taking kids who face a disability no one has ever heard of and placing them into a world where suddenly everyone understands without them having to say a word. It creates an energy that warms everyone near it — from the camp director to the vendors we hire. Anyone close to it glows a more authentic version of themselves. Our campers and staff face physical challenges every single day, plus the mental and emotional weight that comes with them. That builds a level of character seldom seen in the adult world at large.
For years, we’ve had a dream we didn’t have the time or money to bring to reality: help our campers and staff take the extra confidence and positive feelings that flow freely at Camp Footprint back into their lives at home. It is back home that needs the magic of camp now more than maybe it ever has.
Our vision is to work side by side with campers and staff to take that camp confidence back to their home and community. We want to teach them to stand up and speak out about their disability and the effect, good and bad, others may have on their sense self. We want to keep our camp community connected during the offseason in an intentional way, to remind us to be ourselves, Funky Feet and all. Our campers inspire and teach us every day. Imagine what they could teach the world if given the opportunity and the encouragement.
The word character tends to inspire truth, bravery, doing what’s right no matter the fear or cost. Camp peels off the layers the kids wear for protection and survival. Now camp can be the force — during that week and throughout the rest of the year — to encourage these youth to be themselves and push back against a culture that too often leaves them in the shadows.
If only the world were more like camp. With this grant, we’re doing our part to make it so.
Making Camp Last
For most Camp Footprint campers, camp is the only time all year they’re surrounded by people who understand what living with CMT is like. The fellowship stretches that feeling across the calendar, so a kid doesn’t have to wait until next August to feel like they belong.
The two-year pilot runs through December 2027. The second cohort will learn from the successes and failures of the first. The ultimate goal is to have every camper and counselor go home with a kit to guide them in bringing the magic home and sharing it with others.
If Camp Footprint has proven anything in its first decade, it’s that putting kids with CMT together in a room changes everything. The Footprint Fellowship is a bet that the same thing works outside the room, too.
