{"id":733845,"date":"2026-06-13T08:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T08:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/733845\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T08:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T08:47:10","slug":"camp-takes-teens-confidence-to-next-level-winnipeg-free-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/733845\/","title":{"rendered":"Camp takes teen\u2019s confidence to next level \u2013 Winnipeg Free Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

Confidence is always at a high for Danica Taylor when she returns home from a week at Circle Square Ranch.<\/p>\n

The 15 year old, who is finishing up Grade 9, has been attending the sleepaway camp south of Austin for five years, a tradition she looks forward to every summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time we go pick her up at the end of the week, she\u2019s just so excited,\u201d said her mother, Laura Taylor. \u201cShe\u2019s like, \u2018And then this happened,\u2019 saying, \u2018It was great. I did this, and I was showing people how to do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Danica Taylor has attended Circle Square Ranch for five years, a tradition that is helping her become a leader.<\/p>\n

This year, however, Laura wasn\u2019t sure Danica would be able to attend.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to my circumstances, I was like, I can\u2019t afford to send her to camp this year, because I\u2019ve been the one paying for it every year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But with help from Free Press readers and the Sunshine Fund, Danica will return to Circle Square Ranch in July.<\/p>\n

The Sunshine Fund, now in its 46th summer, works with 31 accredited camps across Manitoba and northwestern Ontario and helped send 681 children to camp last year.<\/p>\n

Laura first learned about the Circle Square Ranch camp years ago through friends whose children attended and couldn\u2019t stop talking about their experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never went to a camp growing up, so I wanted my kid to have that opportunity,\u201d she said. \u201cI talked to a couple of my friends, and all of their kids had gone to Circle Square Ranch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had even talked to their kids, and they were like, \u201cOh, it was like really great, I had so much fun.\u2019 One of them even became a camp counsellor there, and had nothing but great things to say, so I was like, OK, well, we\u2019ll give this one a whirl.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result \u2014 a more confident teenager prepared to lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is a fairly confident person, but when it comes to going into a group of new people and just knowing that mom isn\u2019t going to be there at the end of the day to kind of talk it out if we need to, she\u2019s still a little uneasy,\u201d Laura said. \u201cJust because things can go south real quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that changes over the course of the week.<\/p>\n

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\u201cShe likes being the leader and the person people look to, to show how to do things and navigate things,\u201d Laura said. \u201cOnce she gets into that role \u2014 which has happened every year out there \u2014 she comes back super confident and ready to take on new challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danica said her favourite activities are the camp\u2019s \u201cwide games,\u201d where campers in each age group come together for large group activities like manhunt or water tag.<\/p>\n

She also enjoys the smaller parts of camp \u2014 getting to know her cabin mates, building friendships, and settling into the inside jokes and camaraderie that come with a week in close quarters.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe keeps wanting to go back,\u201d Laura said.<\/p>\n

zoe.pierce@freepress.mb.ca<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Confidence is always at a high for Danica Taylor when she returns home from a week at Circle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-733845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}