Strauss Troy Helps Inner City Youth Experience Summer Camp

2018 Camp Ernst Campers

Summer camp provides an opportunity for kids to meet and understand others with different cultures and to discover a connection with nature. The camping experience helps build confidence and self-reliance. For the 24th year, Strauss Troy’s Make A Difference (MAD) Team is pleased to sponsor Cincinnati’s Inner City Youth Opportunities (ICYO) kids to attend a full week of summer camp at Camp Ernst in Burlington, Ky.

Camp Ernst provides ICYO kids with much-needed calmness, fun, and opportunities to make new friends. The camp experience instills values in kids that will last a lifetime. Camp Ernst has traditional camp activities like kayaking, horseback riding, fishing, crafts, and sports, plus a wide variety of newer activities including zipline, banana boat, 100-foot waterslide, and a giant swing.

Inner City Youth Opportunities is a nonprofit organization founded in 1993 by Cincinnati residents Jeanne and Philip Bell to help children living in the inner city. ICYO provides a safe and structured environment for Cincinnati’s inner city school-aged children of low-income families after school and during the summer.

In addition to sponsoring eight children, Strauss Troy’s MAD team also provided a backpack for each camper, full of camp supplies filled with toiletries, beach towels, flashlights, water bottles, sleeping bags. Strauss Troy also supplied a package of camp T-shirts and stuffed animals, bunk sheets, pillow cases and pillows, and bathing suits. Each year a different group is chosen to attend camp; this year preteen and teenage girls enjoyed a week at camp.

“This program really makes a difference in the lives of these children,” said Marsha Weaver Butler, member of Strauss Troy’s MAD team. “One of our campers has gone on to college, and now serves as a director at Camp Ernst, carrying on the camp tradition.”