Building Community and Skills at Feminist Camp
This summer, I had the amazing opportunity to intern for Soapbox Inc.’s project Feminist Camp. Started in 2006, Feminist Camp’s flagship weeklong program runs twice a year in New York City, although sessions have been hosted in Seattle, London, Zambia, and even New Orleans. Feminist Camp lies somewhere between a conference and a retreat, focusing on introducing campers to a variety of feminist careers and individuals through direct conversation.
In addition to my internship with Feminist Camp, I had the opportunity to attend the Summer NYC camp session thanks to funding from the Newcomb Institute. My cohort and I had the opportunity to meet with hosts from the likes of Wasserman, Democracy Now!, Feminist Press, the Forge Project, and more. I was so grateful to explore NYC for the first time with such amazing people, and I thoroughly enjoyed the challenging, thought provoking conversations we had together. This experience also gave me necessary insight for my tasks as an intern.
Feminist Camp’s main needs from me as an intern revolved around marketing and communications. I primarily focused on creating content for the Instagram page and writing a biweekly newsletter for 1600+ subscribers. Feminist Camp had a brand kit that was being underutilized, so I ensured that my content on Instagram was using these brand colors, fonts, and logos for a more cohesive and recognizable page. For June, I created a lot of Pride focused content such as highlighting books by queer authors, highlighting queer creators, and a brief history of queer uprisings before Stonewall. After attending the camp in early June, I also created some recap content for Instagram and for the newsletter. Learning how to layout a successful newsletter in Mailchimp was a new skill for me that will come in handy as I enter an executive board position in SAPHE during the Fall 2024 semester.
In July, we started a big email push to camp alumni, letting them know what we have been up to since their time with Feminist Camp. We used this opportunity to reconnect with alum so we can spotlight more of their amazing work on our pages. July content focused on camper alum spotlights, radical self care, and disabled creators. In July, I also began planning a virtual sex education workshop led by a Feminist Camper alum. This event, happening in September, will be an exciting opportunity for campers from years past to reconnect, network, and learn some sex education that we weren’t taught in school. August content creation revolved mostly around promoting the upcoming Feminist Camp London session, happening this coming October.
My favorite project of the summer was creating a digital zine based on my time at Feminist Camp. This zine will serve as a guide for future campers and applicants who feel unsure about what lays ahead of them in NYC. My other favorite experience was getting to work with my supervisor, Jill Heller, who was a joy and major support for me throughout the summer.
This internship helped me grow in self motivation, content creation skills, creativity, event planning, and more. Thank you to Newcomb and to Soapbox for the opportunity to utilize my skills and learn some new ones along the way.
