The students’ physical and emotional safety and well-being are our primary concerns. Students are supervised 24 hours a day.

Each week, our team includes:

• ~12 Program Instructors, including 4 members of our Year-Round Team (ages 24–60)
• 2 Facilitation Fellows (ages 18–23)
• Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer, Youth Leadership Project Director, and Camp Manager
• ~6 participating teachers

This results in an approximate 1:4 adult-to-student ratio, or 1:2.5 when Youth Leaders are included.

Program Instructors & Facilitation Fellows: We pride ourselves on the diversity of our staff. Our Program Instructors are generally between 24 and 60 years old. They have extensive experience working with children in outdoor settings as well as in diversity, effective communication, and conflict resolution training. Our Facilitation Fellows are generally between 18-23 years and have some professional experience and are mentored by our Program Instructors. You can read more about our staff here.

We provide an intensive weeklong staff training each season for both Program Instructors and Fellows and our year-round team is constantly engaged in professional development. All staff have undergone a rigorous screening process/background check that includes extensive interviews, fingerprinting, and consultation with at least three professional references. At least 60% of our staff are returnees each season. Many of our staff were also once students and Youth Leaders with us.

Youth Leaders: Our Youth Leaders are generally between the ages of 15 and 23 and hail from more than a dozen Bay Area high schools and colleges. They undergo their own intensive, weekend-long (2-day, 2-night), leadership training before they are invited to serve as cabin leaders at the Outdoor Project. They also participate in year-round programming. The competitive application process includes essays, references and a personal interview with our Youth Leadership Project Director. Many of your Youth Leaders are referred to us by their teachers and approximately half of them were Mosaic students as 4^th or 5^th graders.

We house 5-9 students in each single-gender cabin. We also offer an all-gender cabin if requested whenever possible. You can note your preference when registering your child for the Outdoor Project. We intentionally mix children from different schools, but also ensure that each cabin has at least two students from the same school. All cabins have five bunkbeds, two private bathrooms with showers, and full electricity.

Our Youth Leaders (ages 15–23) sleep all night in the cabins with the students. They are supervised by our adult professional staff who remain in the cabins until all students are asleep. These adults then sleep in adjacent cabins and are on call throughout the night via walkie-talkie. The Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer also sleep onsite in close proximity with immediate communication access. This multi-tiered supervision system has been in place since our founding and prioritizes the physical and emotional safety of all participants.

We have a pediatrician and an emergency room physician on call for us by telephone. Many of our staff are trained in First Aid and CPR and three of our year-round team members are Wilderness First Responders, as are some of our seasonal staff.  While Camp MayMac is not in the wilderness – ambulances can arrive in minutes – we do find this more extensive First Aid training to be helpful in our camp setting.

The nearest hospital is Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz which is 20 minutes away from our Outdoor Project site.

You can learn more about what our curriculum covers in our Action Guide for Families. We teach through games, activities, stories, and song. You can get a good idea of what this looks like in our 5-minute Informational Video.

Our curriculum has continued to evolve over our decades-long history. Every educator with whom we’ve worked has contributed to it since we held our first focus groups in 2001. In addition to our Teachers Wisdom Council, we have been advised by psychologists on our Board of Directors and Advisory Board. We continue to revise and update our curriculum every season.

Positive behavioral management is intrinsic to our philosophy and happens in the context of our curriculum. When challenges arise, we stick to our Three Keys to Peace (Listening, Empathy, and Assertiveness) and our Five Tools for Conflict Resolution (Stop, Listen, Talk, Empathize, and Plan). We work together to make a win-win plan where students can thrive along with the other students around them.

If we are unable to support a child in having a successful experience at The Mosaic Project, we will notify the parents/caretakers and may require that the child is picked up from the Outdoor Project. That said, in our decades of serving thousands of children, we very rarely have had to send students home. Oftentimes, children who may struggle at school excel at The Mosaic Project.

Except under the most unusual circumstances, we do not permit calls home. Please do NOT send a cell phone or smart watch with your child. This is purely for the children’s wellbeing. Over 20 years of experience working with children who are away from home for the very first time has shown us that calls home increase homesickness. We are not alone in this – many camps and outdoor schools discourage calls home for the same reason.

The way Mosaic breaks down homesickness is that it’s like having one foot in the program and one foot back at home. We support the students in bringing both feet to the program and being fully present. A call home delays the student’s adjustment and may very well bring both feet back home. Additionally, when one student talks to their family and the word spreads that they have done so, homesickness can spread throughout the entire community. Homesickness is contagious!  Of course, it also isn’t logistically possible for all 90 students to call home each evening, and equity is central to Mosaic’s mission.

We do find messages of encouragement from parents to be helpful, and teachers are happy to share messages to/from your child each night if you like.  We also provide  tools for you to help prepare your child and yourselves prior to the experience. Please see https://mosaicproject.org/wp-content/uploads/minimizing-homesickness.pdf.

If you do choose to send your children, it is important that they come with the intention and a plan to complete the program. We have found that when students come knowing that their parents will pick them up at any time if they get homesick, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The students tend to focus on whether or not they should go home and are unable to be fully present and give the program a chance. That anxiety often spreads to the other students. When students go home early, it is hard on them as well as on the students around them. We want to set your child, as well as all the children, up for success.

We serve three nutritious kid-friendly meals a day. Our dinner menu features pizza, spaghetti, burgers, chicken fingers, and fresh-baked cookies for desert. Breakfasts include biscuits, pancakes, eggs, potatoes, and cereal. Lunches consist of sandwiches and burritos. There are always vegetarian options available, and our staff has a ready supply of fruit, cereal bars, string cheese, and more for snacks throughout the day. Camp MayMac chefs are committed to accommodating allergies and run a peanut and tree nut-free kitchen. If your child has celiac disease or an allergy to gluten, it is best to send supplemental food that we store separately.

You can read more details about our Covid-19 health and safety measures here.