Looking for something awesome and life changing to do this summer? Check out a Girl’s Rock Camp in your area, and consider volunteering or treating your favorite young lady to a day camp for a week of rocking out. Girl’s Rock Camp is a nonprofit organization that seeks to build girls’ self-esteem through music creation and performance; to empower girls by encouraging them to speak up, sing loud, and try out any way of expressing themselves that feels good and reminds them that girls are awesome.
The camps hope to abolish the pervasive idea that rock ‘n’ roll is a boys-only-club by offering an intensive week where the girls learn through lessons, mentorship, positive examples, and the shared experiences of the staff and volunteers—that every genre of music from hip-hop to country music to straight –up rock ‘n’ roll, and every technical job and creative endeavor in the music industry, is available to any girl or woman who wants to explore it.
At Girl’s Rock Camp, girls between the ages of 8 and 17 spend a week learning to play an instrument of their choice, forming a band with other campers, writing a song, having band practice, and attending empowerment workshops. At the end of the week, rock-camp-girls get to perform their original songs with their brand-spanking-new band at a public venue in the city where the camp takes place. Not only do these girls walk away from Girl’s Rock Camp with some new knowledge about music, but they’ve been infused with really important messages that make them feel powerful, self-confident, loved, and capable in ways that are applicable to every part of their lives.
If you’re feeling totally disappointed that this wasn’t happening when you were a kid, not to worry. Many Girl’s Rock Camps offer a Ladies Rock Camp that serves as a fundraiser for the camp for kids. Ladies who attend participate in the same activities as the girls; only it’s condensed over the course of a weekend rather than spread over an entire week. After twenty-something years of nervously complaining about wanting to start a band, I went to the Ladies Rock camp in Boston this past February. It’s up there on the top-ten list of best things I ever did in my life. If the idea strikes your fancy even a little, I’d urge you to go for it.
If rocking out isn’t on your to-do list, but you still want to be involved, consider volunteering to work at a Girl’s Rock Camp session that’s happening this summer near you (there are plenty of things to do that don’t involve having expertise in instrument instruction), or throwing some donations their way so they can keep this amazing program going. You can find all of the how-to information here, and to find the closest GRC to you and program dates and locations, check out the Girls Rock Camp Alliance page.
