Kids Enjoying the Great Outdoors!





    

Camp Cender

                               Primarily Experiencing Archery, BB Guns, SlingShots, Fishing, Hiking, and Camping! 

    Camp Cender's Mission is to educate in the matters of conservation and to instill a sense of responsibility and stewardship for the land and its wildlife. We convey simple concepts such as flourishing habitat, sustainable harvest, carrying capacity of the land and our role as top of the food chain. But most of all Camp Cender is all about Enjoying the Outdoors and Having Fun! Throughout the Spring and Summer Camp Cender Hosts multiple events! Our Biggest Event of the season is called Kicking Bear. Kicking Bear is hosted at Camp Cender By Ray Howell. Kicking Bear is dedicated to get inner city kids (specifically those who rarely get the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors) outdoors and enjoying themselves. Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts are welcome to use the facility at their leisure. We host multiple IDNR Instructional Wing Shooting Courses. These courses are geared to get Women and Children behind the butt of a shotgun blasting clay disks out of the sky. It's a lot of fun, if you're interested click Wingshooting.

    We offer the Camp to any organization that wants to utilize our facility during the months of March-August as long as it doesn't interrupt any other scheduled events. To schedule an event; call Mark Thompson at (217)-417-2447.  
  
                                                        Team WildLife USA
    Our mission is to create opportunities for the existing conservation base to practice and put in motion the "army of conservationists" that are in place and to create opportunities for landowners to make their hunting properties most productive in the off season. Our goal is to motivate landowners throughout the country to get involved and to maximize the potential of their property with regards to conservation education. Our base is comprised of hunters, yet, not limited. Our focus is on conservation education with emphasis on youth, exposure to the great outdoors, shooting sports, hunter safety, and the recreational benefits that often transition to a form of therapy (relaxation) for many. Our message is tempered with the reality that hunting and fishing are the engines that drive our conservation programs in the USA, the same engines that drive many of us.

    We have developed a model camp, Camp Cender, in central Illinois. This is the flag ship camp that bore the seed for Team Wildlife USA. We did it and so can you. It’s not about making big money, but you could help subsidize your ground. The real returns are measured in smiles. HELPING OTHERS. It takes a certain breed of cat to invest their time and energy for a few dollars. But again, the rewards are real. The model we have developed is designed for minimum labor (time) and maximum returns (smiles and life changing events). The work load is distributed, as is the returns, volunteers rule!

    Our vision is for the existing conservation organizations to come together and unite and collaborate in a "youth camp mission." Privately owned camps (overseen by Team Wildlife USA or one of the existing wildlife organizations and a local board), would groom their properties for programs that each conservation organization would create, staff, promote and implement on a yearly basis.

    Camp Cender is supported by our local chapters of Safari Club International, Whitetails Unlimited, Pheasants Forever and the Champaign County Rifle Club (NRA). Each of these local chapters is donating five hundred dollars a year toward camp overhead and equipment and hosting one or more events. Imagine if all the conservation organizations got involved. It would be easy to fill a summer with great outdoor events. We also host an incredible Kicking Bear event as well as a wing shooting clinic and a hunting clinic by the Illinois state DNR. It is well known that multiple exposures reinforce the outdoors experience and maximize the retention potential, this is achieved at Camp Cender.

    From within the ranks of these existing conservation organizations are the land owners of many future camps. Our goal will be to locate and guide them through the process with possible financial assistance through our 501C status, as well as provide oversight.

    A few simple messages are at the heart of the conservation education goals. Carrying capacity of the land, a sustainable harvest, habitat, the hunter’s role as predator in maintaining the balance and the fact - if hunting and fishing ceased to exist, seventy five percent of all conservation programs cease to exist due to loss of funding alone.