Budding Roses needs a last-minute camp location!

Budding Roses launched in 2017 as a free, radical social justice summer camp in East Portland for middle school aged youth. For eight summers, we have hosted a two-week summer camp that includes social justice discussions, art projects, outdoor recreation, free meals, and free school supplies.

After several years hosting our camp at the wonderful Alder Commons community center, Alder Commons is sadly closing, leaving us with just a few months to find and pay for a new location.

Since our founding we have worked to evolve our curriculum and approach to hosting summer camp. We now include a week of youth led workshops on everything from organizing protests in their schools, to making slime, to film and script writing. We believe each camper and counselor has something important to teach. We also include nutritious meals that we prepare together and encourage collaborative activities such as free markets and skill trades.

Your support helps us buy high quality supplies for our camp activities, purchase back-to-school supplies for campers, and provide small stipends to our organizers, counselors, and community partners to offset the costs of volunteering. We are trying to rely solely on grassroots donations to keep our work sustainable.

We encourage youth to share their perspectives on issues that impact their daily lives, such colonization, racism, gentrification, student activism, gender, climate change, and mental health. We emphasize youth leadership and decision-making and take our campers seriously as members of our community. We believe it is more important than ever to foster youth-centric programs where we can grow, create and imagine a future world together.

Budding Roses is funded entirely through community donations and volunteer power.

Mission and Values:

We believe that empowering youth to become critically engaged with social justice issues lays the groundwork for transformational social change tomorrow and today. We see returning campers taking on leadership roles at camp, getting involved in their communities, holding banners at marches, and initiating discussion about social issues with their parents. At Budding Roses, we strive to support young leaders as they become agents of change.