A new summer camp is opening up in Grande Prairie but this one’s a little different. Camp Hoo-Ha was created to bring women back to their younger camp days.
Camp Hoo-Ha is marketed as a place to learn life skills while connecting with like-minded women. Founder Melanie Mckay created it in the hopes of giving women a place to bond and do things they may not have done since they were kids.
“I was a Brownie growing up, my daughter’s a Brownie now and so I had the idea of why not have a skill-building club for women lets just throw some booze into the mix… Over a couple of months on a shoestring budget, Camp Hoo-Ha was born.”
Camps are run in 10 other cities across the province. Every event includes dinner, crafts, and a guest speaker. The first event coming to Grande Prairie is a Self Defence class which will be held on September 26th at Camp Tamarack.
Mckay says this event has gotten a lot of interest so far but in the end, she’s not concerned about numbers as long as everyone has fun.
“There’s usually this sort of energy release that you can feel where women just have fun and forget about everything else; we never talk about work, we never talk about kids at camp. I don’t really care about how many women we have in the room or how much merch we sell, I just want to see a room full of women just have fun and smile.”
Mckay says the plan is to get the camp up and running and then hand the reigns over to a local organizer which plans to run the events once a month.
The self defence class runs from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. For more information visit Camp Hoo-Ha’s website.