MISSION

Camp Avoda is committed to providing Jewish boys with a safe, vibrant, and nurturing summer environment where friendships are built to last a lifetime. We continue our more than 80-year tradition of fostering values of teamwork, leadership, self-confidence, and respect for one another based on shared experiences that value our Jewish culture and traditions.

CORE VALUES

Avoda brotherhood, leadership, spirit, and tradition are among the most distinctive and unique aspects of the Avoda experience. Avoda brotherhood embraces shared values and experiences which nurture the development of deep and lasting life-long friendship in uncomplicated ways in our all-boys camp environment. Avoda leadership provides all campers a secure footing on which to engage themselves and others to reach heights greater than previously thought. It allows them to rise above the average, to develop as leaders of and role models for others, and to pass those skills and perspectives to generations which follow. Avoda spirit touches in ways that animate, invigorate, and inspire the heart and soul of the Avoda experience. Avoda tradition allows the successes of proven programs, practices, honored rituals, and long-standing values to influence the development of each camper’s self-confidence and self-esteem. It is the energy and strength of these four principles which support the foundation for so many to return year-after-year serving fathers, sons, and grandsons since 1927.

HISTORY

Founded in 1927, Camp Avoda provides a safe and enriching overnight summer camp experience for Jewish boys ages 7-15.  The Camp, founded by leaders of the then Brockton Y.M.H.A. and New Bedford Y.M.H.A., was created to offer Jewish boys a summer alternative to city living and to build future Jewish lay leaders, professional leaders, community leaders, and family leaders—all while maintaining a tuition structure designed to make attendance available to as many Jewish camper families as possible.  Since 1927, the year Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, Camp Avoda has operated every summer uninterrupted-never missing a summer of operation and of providing Jewish boys an enriching and fulfilling summer experience.

While offering a full, active, relevant, and contemporary summer camp program, the daily schedule a camper follows remains nearly unchanged from what it was in the 1930’s.  And camp activities take place on the same grounds, fields, and woods used by those very first campers some 80 plus years ago.  That’s why so many campers today continue a legacy started by their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, and great grandfathers.

Avoda remains an independent and unaffiliated non-profit 501(c)3 Jewish camp managed by an all volunteer board of directors.  Avoda receives no regular or formal foundation, federation, or community center support for operations.