The first Flower City Work Camp held in 1986 was essentially a small youth missions trip into our own city.  What has developed since then is a model where churches in the Greater Rochester area unify to send hundreds of students and adults into our communities to serve and bless their neighbors in the name of Jesus.

Flower City Work Camp is a ministry of the whole church, not just the youth.  In fact, today more adult volunteers serve through Flower City Work Camp than students.  And, churches are the central focus for how we organize, plan and deliver Work Camp.  Churches provide adult volunteers to staff all of our sites, work to recruit students to attend, support Work Camp through providing lunches to teams deployed across the City and provide adult volunteers to provide overnight leadership, security, prepare and serve meals and much more.

Here is a complete list of what churches contribute to Flower City Work Camp: Participating Church Responsibilities

In order to participate at Flower City Work Camp 2023, churches must submit an online application (due October 16, 2022). You can find the application here: Church Application

Here are a few more essential pieces of information:

1. FCWC requires each church to provide one “Required Adult Volunteer” for every 3 students they send to Camp.  This is to ensure we have the right levels of adult leadership and supervision across all of our program areas.  For example, if a youth group wants to send 9 students they will need 3 of these types of leaders; if they want to bring 10 students, they will need to recruit at least 4.
2. FCWC requires each church to provide at least one male Overnight Leader and one female Overnight Leader who participate in the evening program and then stay overnight with students from their own church.  This is both so that we have the right level of supervision, but also so that there is someone from a students’ own church who has authority and relationship with the students to guide them through what is taught at Work Camp and for the purposes of accountability.
3. FCWC requires each church to provide lunches to at least one worksite, sidewalk club or sport camp location for three days of the week of Work Camp.  Larger churches may be asked to provide lunches to more than one site.  Each church is required to identify a Lunch Coordinator who will make sure that those lunches are prepared or purchased and then delivered daily to their assigned site(s).  The Lunch Coordinator should recruit a team to do this work and deliver the lunches and those additional volunteers are not expected to apply through FCWC to serve as volunteers.  They are volunteers of the church who are supporting our ministry efforts.
4. Churches must send at least 1 volunteer to serve on either the security or medical team. This person will serve one 4-6 hour shift during the week of camp. This person does not need to serve for an entire day or week.