Vision: Reimagining leadership for our people and our community.
Mission: Live Oak connects diverse, values-aligned youth from New Orleans at sleep-away camp, and then invests in their success all year round.
Live Oak is a summer sleep away camp that is building a one-of-a-kind network of New Orleans future leaders through the fun, friendship, and leadership development found at summer camp.
Status Quo: Networks -- the web of meaningful relationships and connections that individuals make with one another -- power our lives. They provide opportunities, open doors, and expand our sense of who we can be and what we can do. 300 years since its founding, New Orleans is a place that runs on networks.
Challenge: Unfortunately, our city's networks tend to organize along racial and socioeconomic lines, with little diversity to be found in many institutions. This is particularly true for our city's children, whose primary institutions -- school, sports, church, arts programs -- rarely reflect our city's diversity.
Opportunity with Live Oak: Live Oak exists to challenge this status quo in two ways. We help develop individual young people to become stronger citizens, teammates, and leaders. We start with summer camp, but we go far beyond camp to invest year-round in their growth through four additional major program investments: wilderness backpacking trips, gatherings and events, year-round leadership development, and college and career support beyond camp. More broadly, we nurture the friendships and connections between these individual campers and alumni through our long-term efforts to build a powerful and diverse network. Ultimately, we aim to increase their collective power and social capital as a rich and connected community of talented individuals.
