CampHERO teaches young girls about protective services, builds confidence

From July 19 through 26, nearly 200 girls ranging from kindergarten to recent high school graduates will be learning about fingerprinting, cutting apart cars and propelling from buildings at CampHERO.

Partnering with Girl Scouts of Wisconsin-Badgerland, CampHERO allows young girls to learn what it is like to work in protective services, which are career paths girls are not normally encouraged to pursue. It spans a week and immerses the campers in hands-on activities.

CampHERO exposes girls to potential careers in protective services with hands-on activities. (Jen Roman/CampHERO)

Nationally, only 31.2 percent of EMTs, 12.4 percent of police officers and 3.6 percent of firefighters are women, according to the camp’s website. CampHERO is working to fix this gender gap. 

“The world’s population is 51 percent women, and we need to have statistics that reflect our population. People can do this job, they just don’t realize they can,” said Jen Krueger-Favour, captain with the City of Madison Police Department. “Why we do it is because nobody else does it, and it needs to be done.”

The city of Madison and its residents are an essential component of how a program like CampHERO can be successful, said Jen Roman. Jen Roman is a fire captain with the Madison Fire Department, faculty at Madison College and a Girl Scouts volunteer in Madison.

“We have a Girls Scouts Council that is forward-thinking and progressive. They’re not about cookies and crafts, although the girls can do that too. When the idea [for CampHERO] was presented to them, they said we’re in. There wasn’t even a pause,” Jen Roman said. “We have leadership in Dane County that is forward-thinking and supportive of gender equity and working actively to make that happen.”

With a range of ages participating, the camp follows a progression with younger girls learning to squirt water guns. (Jen Roman/CampHERO)

Women are represented in Madison’s protective services at a much higher rate than the national average.

“In Madison, the police department is 30 percent women and our fire department is 11 percent women. That’s three times the national average,” Jen Roman said. “That made our place special, that we had so many women able to do something like this [program].” 

Teams of Girl Scout volunteers, staff and professionals in the protective services came together when creating the CampHERO curriculum from scratch five years ago. According to Jen Roman, the camp’s hands-on activities were designed carefully to best promote CampHERO’s ultimate goal: building courage, character and confidence in girls and young women.

Lessons for the camp follow a progression—the very youngest girls learn how to squirt water guns, while the oldest girls learn how to fire attack.

The CampHERO leadership team puts a huge focus on feedback from the campers that informs how they change the activities moving forward, said Dan Roman, a crime scene investigator with the city of Madison Police Department and a Girl Scout volunteer. 

“It’s a focused curriculum, but it’s not fixed. It moves and it grows with the girls,” Dan Roman said.

The campers do grow over their week at CampHERO—and it leaves quite the effect on the volunteers.

Courtney Bork has seen these changes firsthand. As a crew leader, she was the closest tothe girls day in and day out at CampHERO. According to Bork, the campers not only learn about the protective services, but they also learn a great deal about character and attitude.

“I think camp really helps transform the girls in their way of thinking, especially the high school girls, who are there for an extended period of time,” Bork said. “From the first day, watching them be really shy at times, to the end, watching them blossom and become more confident. It’s really awesome to watch and to help.”

Nate Volz, a firefighter and paramedic with the City of Waukesha Fire Department, agreed. He has found that on the first day, girls cannot quite figure out how to put the fire gear on correctly. By the last day, they can cut apart cars without any instruction.

Volz said the curriculum teaches the girls to see challenges as opportunities to prove people wrong. And they do.  

“We don’t tell these girls they need to grow up and become any one of these professions. The really big lesson for them is to understand is they can do this… they can learn new skills, and they can do it,” Dan Roman said.

CampHERO not only aims to help its campers grow, but the volunteers also say the camp has impacted them for the better. Jen Roman says an “unintended benefit” of CampHERO is that it brings women working in protective services together.

“In the Madison fire department, there’s only 40 women, and they’re split across three shifts and 13 stations. You can go months without seeing another woman,” Jen Roman said. “Now we’re able to connect in this way.”

Bork, who doesn’t work in the protective services but is going to medical school in the fall, said being surrounded by this union of confident women inspires her, especially as a young volunteer. 

“What happens when a cop, a forensic entomologist, and a Girl Scout walk in a bar?” Jen Roman joked. “What we have in diversity around our volunteer table is really exciting, and it’s a place that brings people together that may not have otherwise had that opportunity.”

Volunteers believe developing confidence in the girls is one of the most important aspects of the weekend. (Jen Roman/CampHERO)