WHAT A GREAT FIRST WEEK AT CAMP! We have been talking about the students from Telfair Elementary, with the highest percentage of actual homeless students in ALL of LAUSD-for months now...

This month,  we invited these incredible students from LA's BEST program- Telfair and surrounding Pacoima-area  Elementary schools, to our newly revamped Wilderness Day Camps at King Gillette Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains. ALL of the kids went on amazing nature hikes led by Robert and Cristina of the #wildernessinstitute , were treated to  incredible magic workshops and lessons with Magic Castle magician and filmmaker Joseph Greco (with a special , fun trick we gifted to EVERYONE to take home with them!) wonderful jewelry arts and crafts with Janine McUen-Newell, Hannah, Faith, Dylan, Brian & Karen, and perfect day art therapy drawing visualizations with Kayla Soufer! Everyone enjoyed great pizza picnic lunches daily, then were treated to the tunes of ace DJ Jesse Brooks and some amazing songs by the awesome BRANDON JENNER on our very first day (!) -Who stopped by with his wonderful mom Linda Thompson ... Our fave gal & "Confidence Curator," Miss Zias (Kristina Zias) helped out with a HUGE freeze-dance contest, complete with bubbles and prizes, and each student got to go home with an incredible backpack filled with treats and school supplies on the first day, with more backpacks and freeze dances and prizes happening all week long! Many special thanks to Anais, Karen, Brian, Dylan, Lucas, Faith, Gio, Lisa de Leon and Julian for being such stellar volunteers- along with our FANTASTIC FRIENDS Ellen Poyer, Ashley Poyer & her boyfriend Bryan, Cha-Cha Weinstein and Lindsey and Jazzy! The first day was made especially great by our dearest friend Julie Ellerton  of the  Malibu Times-who helped document and photograph our first day for the Malibu Times!! Our last day was graced by the always-lovely Autumn Chiklis, a writer who spoke to the students about the creation of her first novel, Smothered, and how we are all natural story-tellers at heart. (The children were so taken with Autumn and her own story that she is motivated to return this coming year to teach a writing workshop, where they will learn to write their very own story!), Thank you SO MUCH to the wonderful parents and families of The Malibu schools- #WebsterElementary #PtDumeMarineScience and #JuanCabrilloElementary Schools for collecting such beautiful backpacks for these truly in-need students-along with our great friends at the Malibu Boys & Girls Club for collecting 75 🎒 backpacks! (And Shout-outs to Lecia Harmer and her husband for assembling 25 backpacks with school supplies on their own!) We can’t wait for the rest of the summer with SURF CAMP coming up, such a spectacular first week! Thank you, SO MUCH, to everyone once again who made this incredible week happen. We love you guys, and could NOT do this work without you! (And THANK YOU to Margaret Hauptman for taking the AWESOME photos! xo)