Is Tonight Your Lucky Night?

The Racine Founders Rotary Club is hosting their Vegas Night fundraiser in Racine tonight! Proceeds from this fantastic event will go to benefit Camp Anokijig and we are extremely grateful to have such wonderful partners in the community as the Racine Founders Rotary Club. This event simply could not happen, were it not for the assistance of our fantastic volunteers, who take time out of their weekend to pitch in and help work the event and we thank you very much for your assistance!

You don't need to be Danny Ocean to be a big winner at this event, anyone who participates wins, because they are helping make Camp Anokijig a better place for future generations. Please join us at Racine's Festival Hall tonight from 7PM to 10PM and good luck!

Help Wanted!

When Camp Anokijig was put up for sale and it's future put in jeopardy, our supporters rallied to keep Anokijig open. They came to us offering time, treasure and talent and we did our best to utilize all of those resources to save Anokijig.

We are now several years removed from those days of uncertainty, but Anokijig still needs your help. The Racine Founders Rotary Club has been holding an annual Vegas Night fundraiser, which in recent years, has benefited Anokijig in very significant ways. The Founders Rotary Club believes in the programs Anokijig offers and they see the benefits we provide to children and families and we greatly appreciate their support.

However, the Founders Rotary Club dedicates a tremendous amount of resources to making this event a success and they do ask for assistance from the organizations who directly benefit from it. So we want to put the word out to all of our tremendous adult (18+) volunteers that we need your help to make this event a success. The event takes place in Racine at Festival Hall on March 5th and we would need volunteers between 6PM and 10PM.

The evening includes “funny money” casino games, a silent auction, a grand prize drawing, and a Texas Hold’em Tournament. We’ll need people to run games, deal cards, help with food, and many other positions. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to run a casino game, part of the program is to teach you.

If you are available for all or part of that time, come join Jim, Darin, Don, the Scotts, Lauren, Mary, and the rest of the Anokijig crew, as we have a great fun time raising money for Anokijig.

If you have always wanted to volunteer for camp but haven’t been able to make it up for an event, a weekend, or week, this is your chance to make a difference! If you are over 18 and would like to volunteer, please contact Anokijig at 1-800-741-6931, or email Darin at darinh@excel.net, and tell us that you’re “ALL IN.”

We hope to see you there. Keep thinking warm thoughts and remember, we're just 115 away from the start of summer camp!

Announcing the Anokijig Digital Photo Contest!

Thanks to the continued support of the Racine Founders Rotary Club, our digital photo program was in full-swing, allowing budding photographers to create literally thousands of amazing images. To honor these efforts, we are announcing our first all-camp photo contest. If you have a great Anokijig photo, send it to darinh@excel.net before February 15, 2011. The person with the best overall photo will win one free week of residence camp during Sessions 1, 2, 3 or 4 of 2011. Good luck!

Success!

Camp Anokijig would like to extend a big RIC TIC to all our wonderful staff and volunteers, who were able to help out with the Racine Founders' Rotary Club Las Vegas Night Fundraiser. You can read the Racine Journal Times article on the event at this link-

http://www.journaltimes.com/news/local/article_a16a6f44-1932-11df-a86b-001cc4c03286.html

Vegas Night To Benefit Anokijig This Weekend!

It's that time of year again! The Racine Founders Rotary Club is holding their annual Vegas Night event on Saturday, February 13th from 7-10PM at Festival Hall in downtown Racine.

Some of the proceeds from this event will help Camp Anokijig, so if you can attend, we encourage you to do so. Table games include black jack, craps roulette and the money wheel. There will also be a Texas Hold 'Em tournament.

Admission is just five dollars and includes a chance to win several hundred dollars or a trip to Las Vegas! There may also be a special appearance by The King himself!-



Anokijig will be providing volunteers for this event, so if you'd like to help, it's not too late to call Mary Krahn at 920-893-0782. We hope to see you there!

Casino Nite Adult Volunteers Needed!

The Racine Founders Rotary Club's annual Casino Nite is coming up on February 13, 2010 at Racine's Festival Hall and we need your help from 6-10PM! We need blackjack dealers, raffle ticket sellers and help with check-in. The Founders Rotary Club have become tremendous partners with Anokijig over the past several years and this event helps raise a lot of support for Anokijig.

If you are at least 18 years of age and willing to help out at this event, please contact Mary Krahn at Camp Anokijig, by calling 920-893-0782 or e-mailing her- marykrahn@excel.net. We hope to see you there!

If you are not quite 18 and would like to volunteer at Anokijig, we still have plenty of other work that needs to be done, so please let us know your availability as well!

Casino Night to Benefit Anokijig

A few weeks back we told you about an upcoming fundraiser being held in Racine, to benefit Camp Anokijig. We asked our adult volunteers to pitch in and help if they could and we're so appreciative of the dozens who responded.

Now, we'd like to remind the rest of our adult supporters to attend Las Vegas Night this Saturday at Festival Hall in Downtown Racine.

A Texas Hold'em Tournament will begin at 5:30pm. Doors open at 5pm. A $50 donation includes reservation and entry into Texas Hold'Em prize drawing. Reservations required for the Texas Hold'em Tournament. Call (262) 632-6262 to reserve your spot at the table! Seating is limited.

Las Vegas Night will run from 7-10 pm. Las Vegas style gambling includes Blackjack, Craps, Roulette and Money Wheel. A $5 donation includes entry participation in the silent auction and Grand Prize Drawing, PLUS $100 funny money to gamble with. Purchase your Las Vegas Night tickets by calling Camp Anokijig at (920) 893-0782.

There will also be a Grand Prize Drawing with the following prizes-

1st Place – Trip for Two to Las Vegas PLUS $500 cash

2nd Place - $750 cash

3rd Place - $500 cash

We look forward to seeing you there and thank you for your continued support of Camp Anokijig!

All-In For Anokijig

Dear Anokijig Supporters,

We would like to let everyone know of a fun local event that is an opportunity for you to help support Anokijig and its programs.

The Racine Founders Rotary Club is holding a “Las Vegas Casino Night – Benefit” Saturday evening February 21st, 2009 at the Racine Festival Hall in downtown Racine. This is an annual event that raises money to benefit non-profit programs. This year, the Club has generously offered to include Camp Anokijig as one of the organizations that the proceeds will support.

The evening includes “funny money” casino games, a silent auction, a grand prize drawing, and a Texas Hold’em Tournament. An evening of food and fun; all for a great cause.

As with most great events however, they don’t run themselves. This event will require many volunteers to insure a successful evening. Therefore Anokijig is putting out the call asking as many of our adult supporters as possible to spend the evening with us. We’ll need people to run games, deal cards, help with food, and many other positions. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to run a casino game, part of the program is to teach you.

The event starts at 5pm and runs until 10pm. If you are available for all or part of that time, come join Jim, Darin, Heidi, Scott M., Don, Scott S., and a bunch more of the Anokijig crew, as we have a great fun time raising money for Anokijig.

Here is a chance for all of our great Southeastern Wisconsin supporters to help Anokijig without leaving your own “backyard." If you have always wanted to volunteer for camp but haven’t been able to make it up for an event, a weekend, or week, here is your chance to make a difference!

If you are an adult and would like to volunteer, please contact Anokijig at 1-800-741-6931, or email Darin at darinh@excel.net , and tell us that you’re “ALL IN.”

We hope to see you there. Keep thinking warm thoughts. Just 146 days until summer camp!


Take Care,

Darin Holden
Program Director
Camp Anokijig

Time, Treasure & Talent

Camp Anokijig is the beneficiary of a great deal of assistance every year. This help comes primarily in three forms- time, treasure and talent. The Racine Founders Rotary Club is a great example of a group that helps in all three regards. This past summer, club members came out to Anokijig and assisted us with a variety of projects.

While everyone knows Anokijig's boathouse is the place to go for paddles, oars and lifejackets, the boathouse also serves a very important safety role for everyone in camp. When threatening weather approaches, an emergency siren located on the top of the boathouse tower sounds to alert all campers and staff that they should report immediately to Western lodge.

Some of the Racine Founders Rotary Club members happen to have a background in electrical contracting and were generous enough to re-wire our boathouse, ensuring Anokijig's emergency siren will sound properly, whenever needed. This was a fairly extensive project, which involved dozens of hours worth of labor over several weekends and we are extremely grateful.

More than a dozen members of the Racine Founders Rotary Club also came up for a work day earlier this year, in which they assisted our staff with the construction of a fenceline for a new horse pasture at camp. While both of these acts of service are great examples of how people can help Camp Anokijig, they also illustrate the difference between time and talent.

It takes a certain level of skill and knowledge to re-wire a building, which is certainly considered a "talent." On the other hand, putting up a fenceline is more a matter of having enough manpower to get the job done relatively quickly, which is a great example of "time."

The Racine Founders Rotary Club takes their commitment to community service seriously and they also gave of their "treasure." As was mentioned previously in this blog, Anokijig expanded it's capacity in the last year. Expanding the capacity at Camp isn't as simple as adding a few beds and and a few more tables and chairs in Western Lodge. We also need to expand our program offerings for campers, so all those extra kids have enough activities to choose from.

The Racine Founders Rotary Club made a three-year commitment to Anokijig, to fund a new program area, called Digital Photography. In this program, our campers learn the basics of photography, including how to identify interesting subjects and compose shots in a variety of settings. The great thing about digital cameras, is that the campers can view the results of their work right away and there is no ongoing expense of film for the cameras, because favorite images can be printed out and the memory cards can then be emptied for the next camper to use.

As one can imagine, the initial costs for this program were substantial, as we needed to purchase digital cameras, printers and photo paper for our campers to print their favorite shots. This new program was made possible by the Racine Founders Rotary Club and was also supported by Enterprise Rent-A-Car and we are extremely grateful for their support.

If you would be interested in donating time, talent or treasure, please contact us at 920-893-0782 or e-mail us at anokijig@excel.net