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Camp Katharine Parsons Restoration Project

Camp Katharine Parsons Logo
Nature House at Camp Katharine Parsons

Support the Revival

Join us in reviving the legacy of Camp Katharine Parsons of Phyllis Wheatley Community Center. Your donation will help restore this historic youth camp, ensuring future generations can benefit from its programs and activities. Together, we can make a difference and create lasting memories for our community.

All contributions to the capital efforts are made to our Camp Katharine Parsons Restoration Community Giving Fund at the Minneapolis Foundation, where your gifts grow and leverage even more support for one of only a few Black-owned and minority-serving camps in existence in the U.S. 

Image by Soliman Cifuentes

Phyllis Wheatley's Camp Katharine Parsons is at The Minneapolis Foundation! 

Donate to the Fund

Double Your Donations — through the end of 2024, all gifts to the Camp Parsons Restoration effort are matched, thanks to a generous anonymous donor. Donate now.

To support the capital fundraising efforts that will reopen our historic day camp for Northside youth, you can now make donations to Phyllis Wheatley's Camp Katharine Parsons Community Fund Nonprofit Designated Beneficiary Fund at The Minneapolis Foundation.

This is a special project fund administered by The Minneapolis Foundation. All donations will directly benefit the capital fundraising efforts to bring back Camp Parsons for Northside youth, and ensure that this unique asset is available to generations to come. 

Donor-advisors — to support this needed project, simply ask your fund administrator to make a distribution from your fund to — 

 

The Minneapolis Foundation

Memo: Phyllis Wheatley's Camp Katharine Parsons Community Fund Nonprofit Designated Beneficiary Fund

800 IDS Center

80 S. 8th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55402

Restoring History

At Camp Katharine Parsons, kids and teens from our North Minneapolis neighborhoods learned valuable life skills that prepared them for success as adults. At Phyllis Wheatley's historic youth camp, African American youth, often for the first time, had the opportunity to spend time outdoors, away from the city, immersed in the majesty of nature. At Camp Katharine Parsons, youth were able to gain a greater understanding of the healing powers of the outdoors and expand their worldviews, be inspired to dream big, and work toward their goals. 

At the camp, youth found the mentorship and guidance, stability, safety, and structure they needed to grow into strong citizens and leaders in the community. 

Camp Parsons, 1990s

For more than 40 years, generations of Northside youth spent summers at Phyllis Wheatley Community Center's Camp Katharine Parsons, a natural oasis and a unique piece of Minnesota's’ cultural heritage.

Opening in 1956 thanks to a generous donation of property in Carver County to Phyllis Wheatley, staff and volunteers spent nearly 50 summers busing youth to the property about 30 miles from our Northside community. In the early 2000's, the camp's infrastructure began to fall into disrepair. PWCC closed the summer day camp out of concern for safety, the organization's financial insolvency, and pressing needs in need of attention and resources arising in the city. 

 

Now, Camp Katharine Parsons, which sits on a peninsula jutting into Oak Lake in Carver County, has lain almost completely dormant for more than 20 years, reverted by nature back to an oasis for birds and other wildlife —  a conservation site in the midst of the suburbs.

 

Despite the organization's precarious financial outlook and several opportunities to sell the property, Phyllis Wheatley retained ownership of Camp Katharine Parsons, with board members, staff, and former campers holding on to the hope of seeing its revival and return to serving its donor's intended purpose — to give underprivileged urban youth the chance to experience Minnesota summer camp.

Today, Phyllis Wheatley intends to see the camp fully restored and able to provide the important services it once offered to youth and families in our community. Fundraising has begun, and architects from Snow-Kreilich and 4rmula are drawing up the plans for the restoration as they wrap up pre-design for the property in hopes of breaking ground on the first phase in the spring of 2025! 

 

To learn more about Camp Katharine Parsons and how you can get involved, read on below. We will continue to update our neighbors and supporters as we learn more about the history of the camp, and of PWCC. To see updates, please check here back soon.

Camp Parsons Press 

Stories: Camp Parsons Gains Support of National Trust

Nature House at Camp Parsons

In Highly Competitive Process, Phyllis Wheatley Community Center’s Camp Katharine Parsons Awarded Grant from National Trust for Historic Preservation's Prestigious African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund

The Tree House on the Camp Parsons property will be the only original structure to be restored, thanks to the support of a grant from the Historic Trust for National Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

Phyllis Wheatley Community Center has been awarded a prestigious grant of $75,000 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The grant will support the restoration of Camp Katharine Parsons, a historic property that Phyllis Wheatley has owned since 1956. 

For decades, Camp Parsons was used for recreational activities and restorative programs targeting African American youth from the northside of Minneapolis. Each summer, the agency bused hundreds of young people to the Carver County site where they enjoyed outdoor adventure and learned valuable life skills. The camp is remembered by generations of community members as pivotal because it allowed them to explore a world outside of their urban community – and in so doing, shift their mindset to embrace new ideas, opportunities and dreams. Camp Parsons was, for many, the first place where they could look up and see the stars sweeping across the night sky.

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Read on in the Stories

Join the Revival!

Support the restoration of Phyllis Wheatley's majestic respite for our Northside youth by making a gift to our designated fund for the restoration of Camp Katharine Parsons at The Minneapolis Foundation.

 

To learn about other ways you can get involved in this historic effort, or if you're a former PWCC Camp Katharine Parsons alum, or want more information on the project please contact:

 

Aaron Raivo-Lynch

Director of Camp Operations AaronRL@phylliswheatley.org

Questions about donating? Contact:

Katy Nelson

Senior Director of Development & Communications

KatyN@phylliswheatley.org

Camp Parsons Partners

Hennepin County logo
MN DNR logo
ASK Logo
4rm-ula logo
Minnesota Historical Society logo
Cultural Wellness Center logo
Mortenson Family Foudation
Mississippi Watershed Management Organization
African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund
Coen + Partners
Snow Kreilich Architects.webp
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