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DENVER (KDVR) — This weekend Aurora Fire Rescue held its fourth year of Camp Spark.
It’s a camp for girls ages 12 to 18 to gain leadership, learn confidence and take on physical challenges while participating in an immersive fire-training atmosphere.
They work as a team through mental and physical challenges but also it’s a lot of fun.
“It’s a rough time, especially now with social media and all the availability that they have to be present in front of multiple people and just accessible to everybody,” Lt. Valerie Solano with Aurora Fire Rescue said. “We want to be able to build a confidence level with them to know what’s right and wrong and to make good choices in those environments.”
The goal of Camp Spark is to have them gain skills that can translate to adulthood in their careers and hope is they develop an interest in male-dominated fields like firefighting.
Right now Aurora Fire Rescue is made up of 8% women so they are looking to increase that.
“I do it because I wish somebody would have done it for me,” Lt. Kathleen Hancock with AFD said. “I wish I would have been more knowledgeable that I could step into the world of any type of field whether it’s male-dominant or not, and be able to shine.”
This year they have doubled the number of participants they had last year, with nearly 40 girls participating this weekend.
The challenges include throwing ladders, forcible entry on a door, combat challenges, and using car extrication tools.
This is the same combat challenge that crews are required to do in the fire academy.
Some are attending for the first time and a handful have come back multiple years in a row.
“I want to do it forever if I could,” Savannah, a camp participant, said. “I just really liked that I have an environment where I’m able to make friends and there’s just all these women here that are able to tell everyone all these things that they do on a daily basis.”
The camp is led by all-volunteer members of Aurora Fire Rescue.
Families interested in applying next year can sign up for alerts when it’s time to apply.
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