March 19th FAQ Video with Jared and Jackie

Jared

Hi, everyone, and welcome back for this week’s video. As we answer many of your questions that you have about the upcoming summer. I’m Jared, and I’m one of the directors here at Ramaquois. And joining me again is my good friend and colleague Jackie, and we will work together to try to answer the next series of questions we have received. We’re so grateful for all the feedback we’ve gotten. Thank you so much for letting us know. I’m actually very amazed at the number of people that have said I’ve watched all your videos. And so we are so thrilled, flattered and honored that you continue to follow us and watch those and stay in touch with us. So we have a whole bunch of questions here and just a little caveat that we give at the beginning of each of our videos. We are trying to be as transparent as possible about all the protocols and all the information for the upcoming summer. It is a bit of a moving target. We are still awaiting further guidance from health officials and medical officials that work for and with the state. And as they continue to give us more updates, we will continue to update you as well. So I think that’s our big intro for today and let’s get started. So, Jackie, I’m ready when you are.

Jackie

I’m ready. The first question this week comes from a staff member, and we’ve gotten this from several staff members. Our staff is engaged all year, and we’re in touch with them all year, and a lot of them have been asking us prior to staff training closer to camp. Are there going to be any webinars this spring to kind of fill them in and get everyone up to speed?

Jared

That’s actually a great question. We know that a lot of our staff members have been watching these videos, too, and we’re really appreciative of that. I think many of our staff members have some questions that are very specific to what they will be asked to do during the summer. And so the answer to your question is yes. We will be conducting some town hall, some Zoom, some webinars where our staff will be able to ask us questions that are very specific to their responsibilities at camp. We’re just waiting a little bit longer until we have some further guidance from the state and can really answer their questions more specifically. So in the meantime, continue to watch these videos, hang in there, and we will be doing something that is very staff specific in advance of our staff orientations. And we’ll do that at least a couple of times, if not several times. That’s a great question. All right, Jackie, this next question is for you. And as you know, we get a lot of very specific questions about some of our anchor special events. So this one just kind of right up that alley. The question is this will we be having a Land Carnival, Water Carnival, our famous Snow Day and Rame Games.

Jackie

Okay, well, thank you in advance for giving me a very easy question. The answer is yes. We are having all of those. We will be changing it a little bit to make everything COVID safe. We’re going to be sending certain groups at certain times to the special events, maybe not sending as many groups at one time as we used to the cohorting, the grouping. The COVID compliance is not going to change, but we are able to run every one of those events, keeping all of that in mind. The answer is yes. The Carnival Land Carnival and Water Carnival. Absolutely. Yes to Junior Camp, Snow Day and yes to Rama Games.

Jared

And this wasn’t from anybody that submitted it, but I just figured I’d ask it as far as Rama Games goes. Can you tell us when Rama Games will be breaking?

Jackie

Oh, that’s actually a difficult question, but the answer is easy. No, I’m not going to tell you. That’s just the secret that we preserve for the excitement for the campers and for our staff, and everybody will find out when the time comes, but it’s happening.

Jared

Good answer. Good answer.

Jackie

Okay. Jared, I have a question for you. We know that we’re going to be keeping the campers and cohorts in groups, but there are situations at Ramaquois where maybe more than one group is sent to an activity at the same time. So Nature, for example, we might have two groups that would have gone to Nature or the Lake. Certainly, we would have multiple groups at the Lake is at the same time. What are we doing this summer?

Jared

Great question. So I know we’ve previously answered that all of our program areas are being moved to outdoor or open air covered locations, so that’s one way that we’re making some changes. But to specifically address your question, the answer is that we will only be sending one group to those activities that we normally would send more than one at a time this year. It’d only be one. So you specifically mentioned Nature. We’ll be sending one group at a time so that there’s no opportunity for groups to be mixing at any point, they’ll be remaining in their cohorted group and not mixing with other groups at an activity area. You mentioned the Lake. The Lake is an interesting one because like you said in the past, the Lake is pretty large and we’re able to put multiple groups at the same time. The Lake is an area that we will still be able to put more than one group at one time. However, we’ll be putting fewer groups and the Lake is going to be divided into different sections, so there will be no opportunities for campers to mix while they’re on the Lake. It could be that one group is using one area or one or two areas at one time, while another group is using another area at a separate time. So hypothetically, a group could be at bumper boats while another group is in pedal boats, and there’s a big buoy that separates them so they wouldn’t be interacting or coming in close contact with each other. So those are just some examples where we’re going to be de-densifying certain activity areas and making sure that we’re able to keep the group separate, to remain as COVID safe as possible.

Jackie

Okay, great.

Jared

Okay. Jackie, this next question is for you. And it’s a question that we’ve gotten from many people. And this past weekend we’re very fortunate enough to have done a lot of tours for prospective families, and a lot of them were asking about our uniform policy and about clothing. So I guess the question is, what can you tell everybody about their Ramaquois shirts, clothing ordering. Talk to us about that.

Jackie

Okay. This is a question we’ve been getting for a while, so we put together a little bit of some visual aids to help you. Hopefully zoom will cooperate. We are a uniform camp and two T shirts come with your camp tuition, but every family needs to go online to amerasport dot com and place the order. The first thing it’s going to ask for is the name of the camp Ramaquois, and that will take you directly to our page. So for junior camp, the campers wear gold. There we go. Sorry for the Zoom. Two T-shirts come with the tuition, and it’s very clear on the website. If you can’t see it here, there’s a snow burst that says complementary limit two per camper depending upon your laundry habits, and if you’d like to order any additional shirts, you can look at the exact same shirt without the Sunburst on it, and you can order as many as you would like. So, for example, if you want five shirts to get through a week, you’re going to first put in your shopping cart two of these, then you’re going to put in your shopping cart three of these, you’re going to order a total of five shirts. Ramaquois will pay for the first two. You will be paying for the second three plus the shipping. If you are only ordering just the two shirts and you do not want any additional Ramaquois pays for the two shirts plus the shipping. Girls’ Side same thing. Except your shirts are light blue. Boys’ Side Same thing, except your shirts are Navy. Upper camp, 7th grade on up. You wear Gray, the girls wear the Gray with the blue print, and the boys wear Gray with the blue and gold print. So I apologize for the Zoom challenges here, but I think you can see that those are all the shirts. On the website it is very clear this was just meant to give you a little bit of an introduction. Right on the shirt that says, what age gets, what shirt okay. Thank you for bearing with the audio visuals, and hopefully you find that helpful.

Jared

Now, Jackie, just one quick question. Is there such a thing as too many Ramaquois shirts?

Jackie

No, never. And I will also mention that on the website there’s multiple other apparel items. If you want, nothing else is required per se. Many of the campers choose to wear a sweatshirt or buy a sweatshirt. There are tank tops. There’s a lot of other apparel. Please be clear that nothing is required other than the uniform T shirts for the color of your side. Anything else is strictly optional.

Jared

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Jackie

Okay. Jared, I have another question for you that has come in multiple times, like many of our questions have. How exactly are we going to clean our shared surfaces?

Jared

Yes, we’ve all gotten much cleaner these days, and that’s a good thing. So we are fortunate enough to have a lot of backpack sprayers. And then I’m sure people have become familiar with electrostatic sprayers. They kind of look like this, and people can use this to clean all surfaces between every activity. We have some that are kind of the big backpack Ghostbusters type of sprayers. And then we have others that are handheld. Also, electrostatic and our specialists will be able to use those to clean surfaces between groups leaving and the next group coming to make sure that all of these areas are as clean as possible, we’re going to be doing cleaning with great frequency, using all safe but really good products to make sure that everything is well kept. This will be used not only on tables and surfaces that people generally share. When one group leaves, another group comes, but could also be on playground equipment, boats at the Lake, anything where one group leaves and another group might come in and use some of the same equipment. However, when there are instances where equipment doesn’t need to be shared, like we don’t expect campers to bring their own boats, but if it’s something like baseball gloves or tennis rackets, those might be pieces of equipment that we’re going to be discouraging any sharing this year. So while generally I think we like to encourage kids to share and be good friends with each other. I think this will be one of those years where maybe we don’t share the same equipment as much as we might have encouraged in the past. So lots of cleaning, lots of surface cleaning, a lot of normal, great equipment that will make sure that everything is as safe as possible. And we’re really confident that our staff and our crew are going to be able to do that very effectively.

Jackie

Great. And very specifically, I’ve gotten multiple questions about our life vests for the boats and for the Lakes. I just want to make sure that we address that specifically that’s close to someone’s body that’s being shared. Is this the type of cleaning that would be used on those as well.

Jared

Yeah, same thing. All of these cleaners are safe. So if we use them on life jackets again, these are jackets that are generally going around their necks or sometimes their vest depending on the size of the camper. But yes, we’ll be using the same products on those items as well. Again, any equipment that would be shared is going to be cleaned regularly and cleaned in between periods before the next group or the next cohort would have an opportunity to use the same equipment that another group had just used before.

Jackie

Okay. Terrific. Thank you.

Jared

Thanks again for taking the time to watch this week’s video. We hope we were able to answer some of the questions that you have. As usual, we’ll remind you to continue to follow us on Instagram and Facebook, where we’ll put some reminders about these videos. If you have any questions and you want to reach out either for the video or just questions in general, remember, you can send emails to me. It’s Jared at Ramaquois.com that’s J-A-R-E-D at Ramaquois.com. Thanks so much for watching.

Jackie

Okay, as always, we are going to end like we end all of our line.-ups Jared.

Jared

Have fun, there’s a camp out there.