As the face of America continues to evolve with greater diversity, many camp directors search for ways to reach communities that might not yet be familiar with the camp experience. While every child stands to benefit from a quality camp experience, the best recruitment approach might vary from community to community and family to family. ACA recently spoke with Lorena Garza Gonzalez, PhD, to get a better understanding of how to develop messaging for the evergrowing Latino community. In her position as Director of National Hispanic Initiatives at Urban Strategies, Gonzalez leads efforts to promote national initiatives that strengthen Hispanic communities. Born in California to immigrant workers, Gonzalez was raised and attended school in Texas. She is celebrating almost twentyfive years working in advocacy, program development, evaluation, and supporting communities in growing and sustaining themselves. Readers who attended the 2013 ACA National Conference in Dallas will remember her as an insightful keynote speaker. Why is cultural diversity so important in general — in communities, the workplace, schools, and government? I like to go beyond the term “diversity” because it can often mean just fulfilling a number or quota, such as ensuring that some entity has enough women, enough people of color, age, and so on. To me, that seems as though you’re checking off something. On the other hand, the term “inclusion” tends to seem more based on recognizing values and a company’s intent and commitment to those values. What we’ve learned is that an organization becomes stronger when they have diversity of thought. And diversity of thought is brought by people who bring different experiences. I appreciate ACA’s intention to grow and build diverse inclusion in camps. This is important because the cultural landscape of America continues to evolve, and the reality is, specifically within the Latino community, it’s a large, ever-growing community. If you pretend it’s not there, it’s not going to go away. Also, there’s great value in bringing children to grow up with the values of so many others. It seems that we’ve made such progress historically, and this new generation is
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