Adjusting to sounds of nature

JaVonna Dear remembers the light of the moon as she’d drift to sleep each night at camp.

“You could see this bright blue light that shined through our cabin,” the 12-year-old recalled.

Though she was initially afraid to be in an open-air cabin with only three walls, as the week went on, she felt a sense of peace as she’d look up to the night sky and listen to the sounds of nature.

JaVonna, who lives in Harbor City with her parents, two brothers and three sisters, found out about Camp Oakes through her after-school program, Los Angeles Team Mentoring, which promotes teamwork for middle-school students growing up in challenging urban environments.

LATM pairs each of roughly 1,300 middle school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District with three mentors -- a teacher, a college student and a working professional.

Between 150 and 400 youngsters from the program,ages 8 to 17, attend Camp Oakes each summer. The camp in the San Bernardino Mountains is rented through the YMCA.

For the majority of campers, many of whom are low-income or at-risk, it’s the first time they have been camping or in nature, said Gloria Ramos, LATM program manager.

“We like to survey the children to see who has been out of their four-block radius,” Ramos said.

Nearly 40% have never left their neighborhood.

Camp Oakes instills a similar curriculum to that of the mentoring program, with teamwork being the core value.

“The main focus is teamwork, goal setting and conflict resolution,” Ramos said. “Activities are designed to increase confidence in campers.”

Activities at camp include horseback riding, swimming, rock climbing and a high- and low-ropes course.

For JaVonna, teamwork meant a funny and memorable canoeing trip on a lake with friends she made in her cabin.

“When we took the canoe, we started going in circles,” JaVonna said. “The water kept splashing us and stuff.”

Though water continued to fill the bottom of their boat as they paddled, they eventually made it safely back to shore. For the rest of the week, the girls did everything together.

On the last day of camp earlier this summer, JaVonna took a picture with everyone at camp -- a picture that helps her remember the friends she made and gets her excited about going back next year.

Thanks to the $1.7 million raised last year by the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign, about 8,000 children will go to camp in Southern California this summer.

The Los Angeles Times Family Fund is a fund of the McCormick Foundation, which matches all donations at 50 cents on the dollar.

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nicole.loomis@latimes.com