November 9, 2017:    An eco-friendly summer camp for Jewish children will be held on the campus of Rio Lindo Adventist Academy as of this coming summer.

Jewish news source jweekly.com reported that Eden Village West is an extension of what started as Eden Village Camp in Putnam Valley, New York. Branded as an organic Jewish farm camp, the organization’s website promises “Fun with deep roots” and “Get dirty. Eat organic. Make Shabbat a party.” Camp menu items are fully kosher, completely organic and locally sourced with options for gluten and dairy intolerance.

The branch of the camp opening on the campus of Rio Lindo Academy will cater to Jewish third- to ninth-graders and will teach culinary arts, organic farming and handicrafts. It will also give kids a crash course in herb knowledge and wilderness survival.

Casey Yurow, the Eden Village West camp director says that the goal is to teach kids to become caretakers of nature around them. Eden Village West is funded by a $1.5 million Specialty Camps Incubator grant through the Foundation for Jewish Camp.

It aims to interest Jewish kids from a diversity of backgrounds ranging from the secular to the devout while maintaining a “baseline observance” of the faith.

Rio Lindo Adventist Academy is an Adventist boarding high school situated just outside Healdsburg, in Northern California. It is operated by the Northern California Conference of the denomination.

Adventist institutions often allow outside entities to rent their facilities for their programming. There is typically some due diligence done to ensure that the values of the tenant party broadly align with that of the Adventist denomination.

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