MB Civic

By JULIE BICK

While many campers this summer are tying square knots, paddling canoes or weaving friendship bracelets, a growing number are instead drawing up business plans and generating personal budgets. At entrepreneur and finance camps from coast to coast, business is open.

Christian Burch, age 10, was one of 10 children sponsored by the Greater Scott County Chamber of Commerce in Indiana to attend BizCamp for 9- to 11-year-olds, run by Junior Achievement in Louisville, Ky. The children were assigned to run a fictional business for a week and participated in a role-playing game to try to pay off a bank loan and make the company profitable.

Christian was assigned to sell ads for his own radio station. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was getting into, but he said he ended up liking the program better than the basketball camp he attended the following week. “I loved doing my job and seeing what it would be like when I grew up,” he said. And “we learned to use our money wisely and not spend it all on candy.” His mother, Rhonda Burch, reported that Christian’s first request after she picked him up from camp was to go to a bank and open a savings account.

Jeffrey Solomon, executive director of the National Camp Association, sees the rise in business camps as part of a trend toward camp diversification over all. While outdoors camps are still popular, more camps are appearing that focus on the arts, community service, technology, academics and other specialties. “More kids are attending camp than ever in America because there are more choices,” he said. According to the association, the total number of summer campers has risen from 5 million to more than 6.5 million over the last five years.

Some of the business and money camps focus on how to start a small venture, while others look at career exploration, global monetary markets or personal financial literacy. Most sessions last one week.

At another BizCamp session, 100 children aged 12 to 15 spent their week focused on civics, finance and business. Campers practiced job interview skills and met local business people. They were asked to create a budget for a hypothetical family. The youngsters also went on a virtual Internet shopping spree and then learned how long it would take to pay off the debt they incurred. “When a teenager sees it will take years and years to pay off a small debt because they are making minimum payments, it really shows them what interest is all about,” said Shannon Wendt, the camp’s director.

Ms. Wendt said her team tried to make everything as hands-on and engaging as possible. “We didn’t want it to feel like school at all, so there were lots of games and contests, but in the end they gained a lot of financial know-how,” she said. Nationally, Junior Achievement is teaming up with a variety of organizations to reach 102,000 children this summer with its programs.

Joline Godfrey, chief executive of Independent Means Inc., a financial education group in Santa Barbara, Calif., has seen more demand for her group’s books, board games and camps each year. “Children and teens today may be savvy shoppers, but they are less prepared to manage their own budget and create their own financial safety nets,” she said. She has found that more families are using outside resources to raise financially thoughtful and competent children.

Ms. Godfrey said she thought parents also were beginning to treat their child’s interest in business the same way they would treat an interest in sports and music. “Parents seek out the best coaches and finest musical instruments for their kids,” she said. “Increasingly, they give children’s financial development a similar level of intention and support.”

Business camps are usually priced similarly to other day camps — which makes perfect sense as the business-minded camp directors look at the competition. The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, however, is running 10 one-week camps this summer in the Northeast for children from low-income families, who pay no tuition. Sponsors like Goldman Sachs help pay the bill.

The foundation’s camps focus on teaching 11- to 18-year-olds how to start a business. “We use the idea of running a business to get kids excited about the topic of money,” said its founder, Steve Mariotti. “So when you start to teach them about personal budgeting, they see there’s a reason for it, and pay more attention.”

Eschewing poison ivy for ivy-covered walls, some business camps are held on college campuses. Middle schoolers at an entrepreneur camp held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison ended their week with their own business plan and a stack of laser-printed business cards. Another program, Camp $tart-Up, is for children 14 to 19 and goes beyond marketing plans to the more subtle arts of professional success, including business etiquette and golf lessons. The camp, run by Independent Means, is in a different site each year, and this summer was held on the Cornell University campus, in Ithaca, N.Y.

For high school juniors and seniors, Bentley College, in Waltham, Mass., offers a one-week summer residential program called Wall Street 101. A simulated trading room lets students try their hand buying and selling on world financial markets. The teenagers delve into risk management, asset valuation and other concepts more common to an M.B.A. student than a camper.

WHILE the surfeit of new camp offerings may be enticing to children and parents, they do represent a change in what summertime means for American youngsters. Summer used to be more unstructured, and child development experts like Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, co-author of “The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap” (St. Martin’s Press, 2001), advises parents to give children plenty of free time when school is not in session.

“Summer ought to have plenty of time when you have the pleasure of having to accomplish nothing at all,” he said. “Not only is this ‘unproductive’ time valuable emotionally, but it contributes to children’s creativity and their ability to deepen friendships. A child needs to feel like they are the author of their own life and not always following someone else’s script.”

Although he hasn’t read Dr. Rosenfeld’s book, John DeAngelis, 15, is finding his own balance of leisure and business this summer. Based on the plans he wrote at Youth Entrepreneur Camp during the last two years at the University of Iowa, John has started two services: selling people’s items on eBay for a 25 percent commission, and converting VHS home movies to DVD. He estimates the ventures have netted him $2,000.

This year John went back to camp, volunteering to help the 9-to-11-year-old group. He said that along with hanging out with his friends, playing golf and swimming, “working on business ideas is a great way to spend the summer.”