As we have been doing for the past few years, camp attendees will make their Easter Camp payments directly to your church. Then once regos close, your church will be invoiced by Presbytery Central for the number of young people coming from your church. You’ll find everything you need to know about that on this page.

MANAGING MONEY
This year we are continuing with a different approach to payment for Easter Camp. Before 2017 Presbytery Central had collected all fees, but this has created problems in trying to contact individuals about payment. Even though we’ve said you can’t come to camp if you haven’t paid, realistically we can’t turn people away at the registration desk.

Additionally some families like to pay by installment but this gets difficult for Presbytery Central to monitor and follow up and can leave them having to carry a deficit in cashflow. Therefore we have decided again this year that Presbytery Central will invoice churches directly for the number of their young people who register for Easter Camp. We will send out invoices to churches once registrations close. This means that it is up to you as the youth leader to ensure your young people pay. The best way to do this is to let your young people know your church’s bank account details via a handout or through social media so they can pay by internet banking. Make sure they include their name and mention that it’s for Easter Camp. Alternatively you can collect cheques/cash and pass on to your church treasurer along with the names of those paying. You’ll need a system for keeping track of who has paid. If anyone pulls out after March 4th 2024 they will still be required to pay and your church will still be invoiced for their registration. This has been mentioned on several pages of this website, so everyone coming to camp should be aware of this.

EARLYBIRD REGISTRATION AND SPECIAL LEADERS’ RATES This year there is no early bird registration price – we are simply charging everyone what camp actually costs per person. Registrations will close on Wednesday 4th March 2024 We will only accept registrations after that date in exceptional circumstances. Having a cut off date this long before camp allows us time to arrange groups, accommodation and fit in with Forest Lakes requirements for catering etc. However it’s great if you as a church can offer a subsidy to help your leaders that need support get to camp. Your leaders pay less to your church and the church makes up the difference when they pay the invoice we send them. This is a great way to encourage and enable them in the great ministry they give so much up for.

LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND! There is no way around it – camps cost money. With Easter Camp we budget carefully to keep the cost as low as possible. This year Ann Sinclair Charitable Fund have given a grant that enabled us to subsidise the cost of camp but a registration fee of $190 is still quite a challenge for some families.

There are ways you can make this more manageable for individuals and families: – Allow people to pay you by installment – Fundraise – Set up a sponsorship scheme where people in the church can sponsor a young person to attend in part or full. (Let them know who they are paying for and encourage them to pray. Let the young person who is sponsoring them and encourage them to give thanks and feedback. That way you encourage people to keep contributing in future.)

A FINAL SUGGESTION: PAY IT FORWARD/PAY IT BACK Often parents are reluctant to either admit they need financial help, or to accept it. One thing that helps is to have them see that if they let someone else assist them now, one day their teens will have left home and they’ll have a bit more money in the bank. At Easter time a youth leader will stand up in church and ask for assistance and at that time they can dig into their pocket and assist someone else’s child in going. In other words, let someone else “pay it forward” to them now, and one day they can “pay it back” to someone else.