The Summer of a Lifetime Starts Here
While the chilly temperatures and short days might not reflect it, summer is on here at WinShape Camps as we begin the year with a BANG at our annual Host Rally!
What Is Host Rally?
WinShape Camps for Communities will take their day camp experience to close to 100 cities around the country in 2021! (more on that soon) In order to bring WinShape to a community, our team partners with a host church and a locally-owned Chick-fil-A restaurant in the area. WinShape provides the Summer Staff, programming, and most of the equipment to help teleport campers into a whole new world while never (or barely) leaving their home zip code. However, while camp is in town for just 5 days, a ton of work goes into making those 5 days happen. That’s where our church hosts come in!
“Host Rally is an opportunity for us to get excited for the summer and prepare hosts for success,” says the Team Lead for Host Development, Tory Vore. “We also love the opportunity to really pour into our hosts and create experiences that are fulfilling, encouraging, and challenging. Ultimately, our goal with Host Rally is to add value to our Hosts who give so much to help make camp a reality.”
Each location we send the WinShape experience to develops a team of people to help make camp a truly community-wide event. This team prepares the facilities, recruits volunteers, raises scholarships, gets the word out to families and so much more! Host Rally is a multi-day conference where we bring all of the hosts, many of whom are kid’s pastors, along with the teams they’ve assembled from their community. We also invite the local Chick-fil-A restaurant to send a representative to see the important role they play in continuing the legacy of our shared founder, S. Truett Cathy.
How is this year different?
While we fully expect to host in-person camp experiences this summer, the current COVID-19 conditions weren’t suitable to bring in our hosts from all around the country to Atlanta. Our team is understandably bummed to not be in the same building with this remarkable group of leaders this year, but we’re not letting that get us down! After 2020, we’ve just about become experts in virtual events. Our church hosts will join us live for a virtual Host Rally from the safety of their communities. We’re even doing a separate event for our partners at different Chick-fil-A restaurants around the country.
Stephen Moore, the Director of WinShape Camps for Communities, addressed the change:
“Although now virtual, we are thrilled to still be having Host Rally. It is such an important event for our team and our hosts as we look to host in-person camp next summer, and we truly think it will still be an excellent event.”
These virtual sessions will include talks from keynote speakers like Clayton King, Kathleen Edleman, Drew Worsham, and Toni Collier. Hosts will also get to choose from a range of digital breakout sessions that will teach them anything from how to market WinShape in their community, to how they can elevate their project management and planning skills.
Keep Up with Host Rally
Join us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter on January 19th and 20th and we share a few highlights from the event! We can’t wait to see you soon for the Summer of a Lifetime! Interested in hosting camp in your community? Check this out.