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she definitely could have gotten another job, either some minimum wage job or something to do with her specialty!!

Some people just dont get it! The thing UK minimum wage is twice american - and she could have certainly earned more staying at home!

oh, wow!! twice!!! and yeah, then she wouldn't have had all the plane flights and such!!

exactly - but our cost of living is higher so it kinda balances out!

oh ok, that makes some sense then!

I dont see why people dont do camp for the experince. I mean if you average the pay for the number of hours it is low. I work at camp for the experince

Absolutely! For crying out loud, I am excited for the $10/week raise I get this summer! now normally, this is somewhat a lot, but not at camp where we work 130 hours/week! I will be making approximately $1.61/hour this summer!

I don't understand how anyone would sign up for it if they were concerened about the money! I mean, it is one thing to not realize how much work you really do, but my cousin makes twice as much as me and works the amount of hours I have off (though this is more than minimum wage)! It isn't as if they hide the salary or anything!

I love camp and if I find a better camp and it pays the same as the last one or a little less I would take it.

absolutely! although I am only in the looking process right now and I don't plan on moving camps until the summer after next, so I am just going to stick with this camp. However, if I I were unhappy at all at my current camp I would probably be looking harder.

Its not that I am unhappy it is because of transportation costs from me to go from IL to the east coast

my flight costs more then i get paid
but im obviously not going for the money

I dont do it for the money although I do need some money to pay some small bills I do have

i love camp and cant imagine doing it for the money - the job would just be tooo stressful for the pay involved!

definitely! It is a stressful job! and sadly enough, like teachers, they don't pay us enough for what we do! But, why raise the salary when you still get staff at the salary offered! Makes perefectly good business sense!

That is sooooo true!

It shouldnt be that way - but unfortuantely at the type of camps we work at if they were gonna pay us more they would need to charge more for the campers to come!

It would be interesting know if we would get paid more at a private camp!

My husband and I talked a lot about whether or not I could even afford trying to be a counselor. After all, it is just him and I paying rent, utilities, food, gas, etc. We normally only squeak by financially with both of our incomes combined and we bring home about $3800.00 a month USD. But, we don't have to invest anymore money into things like our cats or furniture so we are going to attempt it.

It will be close. If I wanted money it would be better to work in a gas station or part time.

I found that the pay at private camps was pretty similar to the pay at agency (like girl scout/religious) camps back when I was researching new camps, though that was a few years ago now.

There were some agency camps that did pay less though.

What I saw as different was the ability to get supplies. Working arts and crafts at agency camps, we had what we had and were creative with it, pretty much. At a private camp, if we had a great idea but not the supplies, we'd turn in a list and as long as it was reasonable, they'd go out and get them for us. Things like that.

I think that with private camps the tuition goes to getting more things for the camp, like sports equipment, water stuff, etc. With agency ones they charge less and don't get those things. You work with what you have and the camp gets improved on a need to basis and also with campital campaigns worth thousands or millions of dollars.

I would have to agree.

I'm working at a private camp this summer and in the past I've been working at GS camps. Really, I'm being paid slightly lower (but not enough to make it a big deal). Now, granted I do have a technically lower position this summer, but even then the pay is really close to what I've made in the past.

- Teenster

I know with my first camp my pay was really great for the work and we got alot of extra perks that I must admit I loved like dirt cheap rides to stores ( $1 to go to Wal-mart)and good food for our staff meetings that was ordered out

wow, our staff meetings sometimes have fruit or something. Occasionally we might get something else. Last year Jamba Juice donated like 60 Jamab Juices for one of our staff meetings! Of course, they were all the same flavor, but our ad staff did remember to make sure there vegan ones for our vegans, which was really sweet!

During our staff meetings we had food catered in from Subway and other similar places. We also got free tickets for Busch Gardens in VA, all we had to do was pay $5 for gas and pay for our food while we were there

wow, so many perks! I wish we had some of those! Then again, our local attraction is a water park somewhere within 2 hours of camp (I haven't been there in years so I don't know where exactly it is!). And even then I don't think they take us there or pay for us if they do! Who knows though! I will in a few weeks though!!!!

At that camp the work was slightly harder since it was a special needs camp so I think that tried to give us the extra perks to boost our sprits since we had 10 weeks of campers.

oh ok, makes more sense now. Special needs kids are hard to work with, especially since you camp probably took more severely disabled kids. My camp has a program for "mild to moderate developmental disablilites." We just don't have the staffing, trainin, or environment to take on some disablilites. Plus we want to make sure that each of the kids we do have in the program will be able to benefit as much as possible and if they have too severe of a disability that they can't do a lot of our activites or go to parts of cam it doesn't work out as well.