YMCA Camp Mason

Camp Mason runs its summer programme as a deliberately phone-free experience, so children arrive, put their screens away and spend their days outdoors on a 460-acre site of forest and streams that sits next to the 70,000-acre Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Days are built to keep campers busy with creative and active pursuits within a small, welcoming community, and the camp describes itself as big enough to offer a broad range of programs yet small enough that every camper is given individual attention and valued as a person. The programme is shaped by the camp's mission, which threads environmental stewardship, spirituality and respect for others through the bonding friendships and physical activity of outdoor camping. The four YMCA values of respect, honesty, caring and responsibility set the tone, and staff encourage children to try things they have never tried before, in a place that, as the camp puts it, celebrates the leap as well as the landing. Alongside the resident summer camp, the same site hosts day camp, family weekends and Outdoor Center programmes for schools and groups, giving the whole operation a year-round rhythm of outdoor learning.