Summer camp puts focus on mentoring and inspiration

IMPACT CAMP

The ninth annual Impact Camp brings participants together for mentoring with guest speakers and camp counselors.

At Impact Camp, the emphasis is on positive influences.

The camp, sponsored by Meck Investment Company, is in its ninth year and will take place at Johnson C. Smith University July 22-26 from 9 a.m. to 3.p.m. Executive director Shawn Kennedy said the camp began in 2015 and eventually moved to JCSU in 2017.

Kennedy, an entrepreneur whose portfolio includes clothing stores, restaurants and a property management company, said the camp is an opportunity to give back to the communities he grew up in. He brought friends and family together to launch the camp in 2014.

“I ended up having about 20 gentlemen show up, and these gentlemen were from all walks of life,” Kennedy said. “I have people from the religious, business and civic communities. I have brothers that were entrepreneurs, plumbers, and some that were just guys from the street.”

The camp also hosts guest speakers from around the community, including retired Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney, radio personality No Limit Larry, city council members and developer Chris Dennis, who is working on upgrades along Beatties Ford Road.

“One thing we always tell them is, ‘be honest, tell your story, don’t sugarcoat it.’ Sometimes people tell their stories, and they don’t talk about the times that they fall, just the times they want you to hear,” Kennedy said. “The last thing I always tell them is to tell [campers] something you wish somebody told you when you were 13 years old.”

Impact Camp also encourages alumni to stay involved after they age out as junior counselors as teenagers or full-time counselors when they come back from college.

“We need to teach our young children to always give back. When you take, you always give back to the Earth,” Kennedy said. “So, they give back to their little brothers, and they also learn more about career paths, so at the same time, they’re helping somebody else and also learning.”

Kennedy said aside from the free camp experience, the staff are from backgrounds like the campers, which gives the children relatable mentor figures.

“SOS, saving ourselves, that’s what makes it different,” Kennedy said. “I don’t think there’s any camp that you walk in, and the demographic will be 90% brown and Black males. You just don’t see that, not in the school system, not anywhere.”

Kennedy said the camp’s primary goal is to provide hope and communication to young people where they can look around and find successful Black men.

“You can think that it’s unattainable, like that’s not me, I can’t do that right? But, when you see a guy that looks like you and he tell you that he was born right on the same street you were born on, and he went through some of the same things you did, that’s inspirational,” Kennedy said.

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