Summer camp aims to teach Charlotte kids about building future, leadership skills

CHARLOTTE — It’s the 11th year of Impact Camp in Charlotte, and their goal is to build leaders in the community.

Channel 9’s Evan Donovan met with organizers and the kids who are having fun while also thinking about their future. That includes rising sixth-grader Ethan Faulk.

“We went to go talk to some entrepreneurs who were talking about real estate,” Faulk told Donovan on Monday. “I really did find that interesting.”

The camp is for boys aged 8 to 13. Local developer Shawn Kennedy and his group, The Meck Investment Company, started the camp in 2015. Kennedy is also the developer working to restore Charlotte’s Excelsior Club.

“Eight to 13 is an age we feel that it’s old enough to learn, but they’re not old enough where they’ve made their mind up on who they are,” Kennedy said. “Community has believed in me my whole life. People have always poured into me. So this is me just paying it forward.”

The camp stresses what Kennedy calls the “four Es,” which are employment, enrichment, enlistment, and entrepreneurship.

Monday’s theme was enlistment. It included a visit from the U.S. Army, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella Patterson.

Patterson challenged the boys to stay positive on social media and not get involved in those teen takeovers we’ve been seeing recently.

“When I see this many youth in this place, and they’re here all day -- like, this is amazing to me. Because I know they’re not out on the streets. They’re not idle, they’re not out getting into trouble. The more we can replicate this -- across our city, our county -- the better it is overall,” Patterson said.

She also challenged the boys to have long-term goals, and think about their future. It’s something Ethan was happy to do for us.

“I probably can do like a scientific thing? I wanna be a scientist because I got a great memory and I can remember formulas and different things,” he said.

The camp has been very popular. Twice as many people applied this year as the camp could accept.

But next year, the founder says he’s going to run the camp for two weeks.

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