Every village has a job the camp cannot run without.
Village | Students in 2026 | Lead adults | Job for the camp | What they learn doing it |
Builder villages A, B, C | About 75 across three villages, in school pods of about six | A lead construction educator per village, plus pod educators | Build 8x8 sheds, 8x12 sheds and 8x12 shelters to finish | Framing, roofing, siding, electrical, tool safety, pacing a crew toward a deadline |
Culinary | About 15–17 | A professional chef and culinary educators | Three meals a day for about 200 people from a field kitchen | Prep, cooking and sanitation in rotation; cooking from scratch at scale; food safety |
Safety | About 20 | A paramedic-firefighter educator and a nurse educator | Medical tent; heat and hydration rounds; medications; the daily safety message | Stop the Bleed, first aid, CPR, the medical plan, working in squads and platoons |
Communications | About 15–20 | A media educator, professional videographers, agency PIOs | Document the week; brief the camp; post family updates; run a press briefing | Camera, audio and editing; the PIO and Planning roles in ICS |
Builders. Builders worked in pods under their own teacher, on kits staged before camp. On day one, Seth O’Hare, a builder village lead, described the first steps as “planning, planning, planning”: team meetings, materials staged, the first cuts. By midweek, students who had never swung a hammer were on roofs. Big Red, a Phoenix High School builder, filmed himself walking through his third window installation so he could teach it later. He described the point as “being able to not only hear what is being said, but translate it into physical work and then take that work and be able to reteach it.”
Cooks. Culinary students rotated through prep, cooking and sanitation in three crews. By Thursday, Chef Scott Daffron said, they needed “minimal to no direction.” Two students who had asked to stay on sanitation ended the week grilling hamburgers for the whole camp. Daffron was clear about the goal: not to make chefs, but to make sure that in an emergency, “if they needed to feed people, they can do that safely, cleanly and not get people sick.”
Safety. The safety village split into two platoons of two squads each, deliberately separating students who already knew each other. Students wrote the medical plan, ran rounds and handled first aid across camp. Some practiced suturing on training models and worked through simulated medical scenarios.
Communicators. The communications village worked as both a media team and the camp’s public information office. Students ran cameras and audio alongside professional documentary filmmakers, staffed a fixed interview booth, edited daily posts, worked with the planning chief on the next day’s plan, and served as student PIOs (see the article on the student communications team).
NOTE: Students could also cross over. Some culinary students spent time swinging hammers, and some builders visited the kitchen.