metro »
EXERCISE
*
YOUR BRAIN
Students from
Marquette High
School in St. Louis
help Motor City
Blight Busters
remove trash from
the streets of
Metro Detroit.
*No workout clothes required.
Put Your Best Brain Forward
Mind University is a new cognitive wellness
initiative offering health and wellness workshops,
family support, and Mind Aerobics, an innovative,
evidence-based program to help adults maintain
or strengthen their brain function.
Mind Aerobics, developed by the
New England Cognitive Center, stimulates
six major functions of the brain:
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Reaction time
Visual/spatial relations
Attention and concentration
Memory
Language
Problem solving
Classes are organized by cognitive level;
each level has 24 sessions held over 12 weeks.
For more information,
please contact the Jewish Family Service
Resource Center at 248-592-2313.
Funded by
22 March 31 • 2016
Helping Hands
Tamarack Camps helps connect
two communities.
Laura Adler
Special to the Jewish News
P
eople helping people, com-
munities aiding communities
— these are common values
that we embrace as Americans — and
core values that Tamarack Camps tries
to instill in its constituents whether
through summer camp or its year-
round outdoor education program.
The saying that everyone is connect-
ed through six degrees of separation
rings true for many. Here is the story of
how Tamarack Camps, a Jewish camp,
became connected to a public high
school in St. Louis to help make com-
munity stronger.
For the past five years, Marquette
High School in West St. Louis County
in Missouri, has offered its students an
Alternative Spring Break. This year’s
trip, March 13-17, brought students to
Detroit to perform community service.
Why Detroit? School Principal Dan
Ramsey looks every year looks for an
area in the Midwest that could benefit
from community service. Marquette
High School worked with Motor City
Blight Busters Detroit, a nonprofit
organization that, in conjunction with
its coalition of community partners,
renovates homes and secures aban-
doned buildings to improve neighbor-
hoods in the city of Detroit.
In January, spring break accom-
modations for students through a local
church fell through. Scrambling to find
housing that was affordable and could
accommodate the large group, Ramsey
was eventually led to Tamarack Camps.
Here is the six degrees of separa-
tion that lead Dan Ramsey to Steve
Engel, Tamarack Camps CEO: Dan
reached out to a teacher at Marquette
who contacted her old camp direc-
tor, Mary Rogers, from Sherwood
Forest Camp in St. Louis. Rogers had
served on the local St. Louis American
Camp Association Board with Steve.
She recalled Steve had relocated to
Michigan and suggested making a call
to him. The rest is history.
Tamarack Camps is known as the
community’s Jewish summer camp.
However, during the school year,
Tamarack Camps also serves more
than 10,000 students, adults and spe-
cial interest groups through Outdoor
Education programs at winterized
facilities both at Camp Maas and its
Butzel Retreat Center.
“The opening of the Shirlee and
Merle Harris Environment Center
in the spring of 2016 as well as the
recent purchase of a 23-acre farm are
wonderful additions to our year-round
programs and facilities,” Engel says.
Tamarack Camps is a great destination
here to serve not just the Jewish com-
munity but the entire Metropolitan
area and, in this case, a high school in
St. Louis.
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Laura Adler is marketing director for Tamarack
Camps.