Strauss Troy Helps Inner City Youth Experience Summer Camp

Summer camp provides an opportunity for kids to meet and understand others with different cultures and to discover a connection with nature. The camping experience helps build confidence and self-reliance. For the 24th year, Strauss Troy’s Make A Difference (MAD) Team is pleased to sponsor Cincinnati’s Inner City Youth Opportunities (ICYO) kids to attend a full week of summer camp at Camp Ernst in Burlington, Ky.Camp Ernst provides ICYO kids with much-needed calmness, fun, and opportunities to make new friends. The camp experience instills values in kids that will last a lifetime. Camp Ernst has traditional camp activities like kayaking, horseback riding, fishing, crafts, and sports, plus a wide variety of newer activities including zipline, banana boat, 100-foot waterslide, and a giant swing.Inner City Youth Opportunities is a nonprofit organization founded in 1993 by Cincinnati residents Jeanne and Philip Bell to help children living in the inner city. ICYO provides a safe and structured environment for Cincinnati’s inner city school-aged children of low-income families after school and during the summer.In addition to sponsoring eight children, Strauss Troy’s MAD team also provided a backpack for each camper, full of camp supplies filled with toiletries, beach towels, flashlights, water bottles, sleeping bags. Strauss Troy also supplied a package of camp T-shirts and stuffed animals, bunk sheets, pillow cases and pillows, and bathing suits. Each year a different group is chosen to attend camp; this year preteen and teenage girls enjoyed a week at camp.“This program really makes a difference in the lives of these children,” said Marsha Weaver Butler, member of Strauss Troy’s MAD team. “One of our campers has gone on to college, and now serves as a director at Camp Ernst, carrying on the camp tradition.”