Cascadian Center at Camp Brotherhood Programs
NEW CHALLENGE SERIES
Based on our successful TV program that aired on KOMO-TV 50 years ago, this series features a public dialogue among community leaders from mixed religious, cultural, racial and political heritages on topical issues of the day. It is attempting to model respectful discourse on complex issues and demonstrate that it is possible to awaken to solutions that promote the greater good by avoiding partisan polarization and listening and leaning into collective wisdom.
BACK TO THE FARM
Nature Studies with your Younger Grandchild. These three day programs bring grandparents and grandchildren together to learn fascinating facts about nature and in the process it creates bonds that last a lifetime. Our farm animals, nature hiking trails and scientific experiments with microscopes and telescopes coupled with teamwork assembling birdhouses, hand-cranking ice cream and watching a sheep-shearing demonstration provide experiences that are all too rare for our youth today.
INDEPENDENT RETREAT SERVICES
This mission-based program enables educators, counselors, consultants, spiritual directors and other professionals in our community to expand their businesses. We make our facilities, resources and services available to them at discounted rates so that they can contribute to the greater good. They do this through their core competencies in conflict resolution, violence prevention, environmental stewardship, interreligious dialogue, and much more.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
- On August 31, 2011, we sponsored an unprecedented inter-political and inter-faith summit of leaders to address the question: what would an economy look like that holds both fairness and freedom as equally important values? More than 150 attendees were invited for their diversity, representing Tea Party, Libertarian and Progressive viewpoints and the religious diversity of Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim and “none” affiliations. What became clear is that there is an urgency to courageously step into the deep values connected to faith to address current economic challenges and the impact they are having on our nation’s citizens. We learned that to affect change we need to engage people across the whole political spectrum and get beyond ideologies to find true solutions.
- There are two prevailing and interrelated needs facing Cascadian Center at Camp Brotherhood: the need to achieve financial sustainability in our operations; and the need to increase the usage of our facilities by groups and programs that reflect our legacy mission. We currently rely on community donations to balance our operations budget and that leaves little for capital improvements. Our goal is to obtain seed funding to expand our operating infrastructure, making our full time staff more efficient and equipped to grow our business. That will allow us to balance our operations budget with usage income and apply fundraising proceeds to the expansion and stewardship of our assets.