For most people, New Year’s Day is the time in which they reflect on the past year and set goals for themselves for the next calendar year, but not for ESF. For us, our New Year’s Day is at the end of September and is called Kaizen.

You may be thinking to yourself, “What in the world does Kaizen mean?” Glad you asked! Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning “continual improvement.” At ESF, it is a goal of ours to practice the concept of Kaizen on a daily basis, but for one week at the end of each camp season, we give the concept our full attention. Our Kaizen sessions are where we take a deep and critical look at how we run our camps and outline where we excelled, but more importantly, where we could have been better. These sessions are super important to us as both an organization and individuals as we strive to provide our ESF family with a premier summer camp experience year after year.

ESF’s Executive Director Michael Rouse reflected on this year’s Kaizen stating, “It was a great session this year with lots of healthy debates and great progress being made overall. Our whole team here is excited to see the changes we are planning on making being put into place.”

This was a week that will turn into a month-long strategic planning effort of exciting initiatives and enhancements that we will incorporate into the following summer. We hope you are as excited as we are to have you experience them for yourself!