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: # # # # # # 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. * Laura Adler is marketing director for Tamarack Camps.