YMCA Camp Northern Lights has launched the Be the Light Campaign, an effort to fund the construction of a commercial kitchen and dining hall in two phases.
We see this new facility as essential to our ability to fully realize our mission to nurture our need for belonging and connection, to each other and to the outdoors. Not only will the new facility nourish our camp by physically sustaining our busy campers, it will serve as a place where people come to connect with one another and restore their spirit, mind, and body.
This is also an urgent need — on the evening of June 15, 2024, we experienced a fire within our beloved camp. The Orion building — our only commercial kitchen at camp — was destroyed and rendered a total loss. You can read the full story in the fall 2024 edition of Letters from Camp.
We are incredibly excited about our campaign. We hope to construct a two-phase facility. Phase one will be a full, camp-sized commercial kitchen. It will enable camp to serve food to everyone present to eat nearby under a tent or to transport back to their own cabins. Phase two will be a dining hall attached to the kitchen, designed to seat 250 people and overlook the magnificent sunsets on Bear Island Lake.
Our financial goal is to raise $3.5 million to complete phase one as soon as possible to enable the prompt construction of a camp kitchen sized to meet the full needs of our camp.
If you would like to support the Camp Northern Lights community and team, please consider making a gift to our Be the Light Campaign today. Significant recognition incentives are available for gifts of $25,000 and above; please contact Executive Director Isaac Patterson to learn more.
Illustration below: Preliminary artistic concept sketch of the proposed dining hall. Phase one, the kitchen, is on the left-hand side with a grey roof. The dining hall has the green roof.
