Campers across Canada can now connect to leaders and friends this summer in a new way, with a virtual camp experience.  

When the pandemic hit, all camps, including One Hope Canada, had to try and find a way to continue on even though government guidelines prohibit sleep away camp. 

“The MyCamp App started as One Hope Canada having a desire to give a tool to our 45 camps that we have across the country and a way to connect with campers after they’ve spent a week at camp.” Says the National Director of One Hope Canada, Bill McCaskell. 

The app was upgraded to create a virtual experience of camp, even while kids are at home, and launches on July 3 in the App store on either an Android or Apple device. 

One function in the app includes chatting with other campers and cabin leaders.  

“They can also tune into live events. One Hope Canada will be hosting a live event once a week throughout the year where they can tune in. Throughout the live event there will be contests, some Bible teaching, and they can interact with the host by responding to polling questions. This is a national event. However, camps can host their own camp event as well.” 

There is a game component to the app where kids will be quizzed on what was talked about during the live event.  

 moderated for safety. There is A.I. moderation as well as human moderation. The chat itself is only open from 9:00 am until 9:00 pm.” Says McCaskell. 

One Hope Canada Home 5

There are five physical One Hope Canada camps throughout Manitoba, including the first One Hope Camp that started back in 1928, Gimli Bible Camp, just north of Winnipeg.  

“All of our Manitoba locations are planning to do day camps. We were very thankful that we were given guidance ahead of time for what was permitted and what wasn’t. In other provinces it’s been difficult because sometimes the governments haven’t been able to discern how they want to move forward until much more recently.” 

McCaskell says that by that time it was too late to run day camps in some other provinces. 

In Manitoba, during a regular summer, the five physical camps host around 3,600 campers. Now day camps and/or downloading the MyCamp app will be the options this year.