Managing Risk at our Summer Camps
A Message from the CEO and COO, Pete and Alexa
Dear Parents/Guardians,
My sister, Alexa, is the Co-Founder and COO of iD Tech Camps. I am the President and CEO. We want to welcome you to the iD Family. We’ve been at the helm of iD Tech for 15 seasons now, and we love what we do. We love bringing the most exciting summer computer camp experience to all of our students.
Alexa and I are both parents. As parents, we both understand the implicit need to reduce risk at our camps as much as possible. Safety has always been our top priority, and this year will be no exception.
We have to ask ourselves each day, “Would we send our own kids to iD Tech Camps? Would we trust the company enough to leave our own kids in the care of the staff we have hired and trained?” The answer to both of these questions is “Yes.” I personally travel around to many of our training sessions prior to camp, meeting our summer staff face to face. Our team of trainers is the best in the business.
Again this year, several members of our summer camp’s administrative team (including myself) have attended important workshops on emergency preparedness—we’ll never stop learning. Following the workshops, we conducted a thorough review of our camp’s policies and procedures, and instituted several changes designed to better ensure the safety of our students in the event of an emergency situation.
We have reviewed our camp’s procedures in the following areas:
- Evacuation and shelter procedures
- Student checkout and authorization for emergency pick-up
- Medication administration
- Addressed relevant topics such as Avian Bird Flu, West Nile Virus and H1N1
- Reassessment of quantity and type of emergency supplies stocked
- First aid, search and rescue, communications, and other response components
What We Do to Be Proactive
ACA Accreditation
iD Tech Camps is American Camp Association (ACA) accredited at many of our sites. All iD Tech Camps sites follow the guidelines set by the ACA. Many of iD Tech Camps’ policies are even more stringent than those of the ACA.
Each staff member has passed the following:
- Sexual Offender Background Checks
- Criminal Background Checks
- Multiple Reference Checks
- Identification Checks
- We conduct these checks on both new AND returning staff-each season.
Counselors-in-Training? Teen Program Assistants? Not at iD Tech Camps.
Distinguishing ourselves from most summer camps, we’ve respectfully created a policy of “No Counselors-in-Training” (CITs). This guarantees that each student is instructed AND supervised exclusively by paid adult staff. CITs, we feel, can be an asset to some camps, but not iD Tech Camps. We do not cut corners by cutting payroll and quality. We recruit industry professionals, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates majoring in Film, Computer Science, Engineering, Education, Media Arts, Game Design and other related fields. We are proud to say that many iD graduates work for us once they have gained real-world college experience.
Supervision
Students will be supervised 24 hours a day by trained iD Directors and Staff. Students will be escorted and supervised to and from all camp-related destinations. All students have 24-hour access to nearby emergency medical facilities. Our Camp Directors carry a cell phone and each camp has a Director and staff that are CPR/First Aid certified. In addition, each camp is visited multiple times by the Regional Manager and often times by us personally in the main office. Alexa and I are both Official Unannounced Site Visitors. We are looking to make sure that each camp passes our rigorous safety and quality benchmarks.
We thank you for taking the time to read through this letter. On behalf of all of us at iD Tech Camps, we want to wish you and your camper(s) an incredible experience at iD Tech Camps. We’ll see you this summer.
Sincerely,
 Pete Ingram-Cauchi President iD Tech Camps |
 Alexa Ingram-Cauchi Co-founder and COO iD Tech Camps |
