“During a summer when YMCA Camp Coniston closed for normal operations due to COVID-19, we hosted a listening session with renowned speaker Dr. Carolyn Finney, author of Black Faces, White Spaces.
Coniston parents, community members, board members, and staff were joined by representatives from the Concord, NH YMCA, Colby-Sawyer College, New England College, the Society for the Protection of NH Forests, Merck Forest and Farmland Center and the National Park Service to consider Carolyn’s words and engage in a question session that lasted for three hours.
The evening was made possible through the generous funding of an anonymous donor and the connections of Coniston afterschool and camper parent Rebecca McCown, PhD. Rebecca’s career with the National Park Service makes her a national expert on the subject of minority use in the outdoors as well.
In response to the Christian Cooper, George Floyd, and the BLM movement, YMCA Camp Coniston desires to think more critically about what we can do to make certain that we are not only an anti-racist organization, but that we welcome everyone in our community—perhaps in ways that we haven’t always been and were not always even aware.”
—John Tilley, Executive Director, YMCA Camp Coniston
