2025 Rural Alaska Program Report
In 1964, Camp Fire’s Rural Alaska Program began by providing aid to rural communities impacted by the Great Alaska Earthquake. Thanks to support from partners, Camp Fire’s Rural Alaska Program has visited over 100 communities throughout the past 61 years!
Read the 2025 Rural Alaska Program Report
Letter from our President and CEO
Camp Fire Alaska has a long, rich history of serving rural Alaska that began over 60 years ago. Over that time, our programs have reached over 100 communities statewide, bringing the joy of summer camp programs to children in their home communities—often in remote and hard to reach places.
Often Camp Fire is the only program option during the summer months in many of these remote communities. Over the decades, our relationship with rural Alaska and indigenous partners has grown and evolved to understand our role more authentically as a partner in the work—to center Elders, intergenerational connections, and cultural relevance in the program design and delivery. We have been and are honored to be invited in—to be trusted to share and exchange knowledge and learning in partnership. Our programs have evolved to include community members, Elders, teens, and youth of all ages—a community-based program centered on indigenous values.
Over the past 61 years, the program has had periods of growth and contraction, largely based on state and federal investments into the rural parts of our state. And 2025 brought many challenges for Camp Fire Alaska to navigate, with the single largest impact to our rural program. As funding challenges and shortfalls fell upon tribal and regional partners, the impact was and is felt in local communities. Camp Fire’s Rural Program was severely impacted this past year—with a reduction from 34 communities served in 2024 to only 9 in 2025.
To be candid, the impact is difficult not only for our organization, but the local communities and children who look forward to their weeks of camp each summer. As a team, we stayed focused on impact. I am reminded that no matter the size of our program, the impact we have is profound and for many, our work is life-changing. So this past year we were smaller, but that does not diminish the impact for those communities and youth we were able to serve.
What I do know is that Camp Fire will continue to find a way to serve rural Alaska. This is an opportunity to evolve, discover new partnerships, and understand the needs of communities in a deeper way. Our commitment to Rural Alaska remains strong and continues to be rooted in our history of resilience and adapting to change.
