Celebrating Resilience: A Camp Just for Military Kids
On a sunny June day, surrounded by mountains and a lush forest, a hundred campers navigated a series of obstacles on Camp K’s activity field. With a lot of laughter, and some careful communication during the tougher challenges, teams learned to move as one and trust their partners.
You could say it’s not unlike what their parents experience at their jobs. Because this is Operation Purple® Camp, and each of these kids are from a military family.
Every summer, Camp Fire Alaska partners with the National Military Family Association (NMFA) to run Operation Purple Camp at Camp K on Kenai Lake. It’s a week exclusively dedicated to celebrating military kids.
The Operation Purple teen group pose for a photo while they wait for the obstacle course to begin.
“We want them to walk away from this feeling connected, having more tools to focus on resilience, and to just take a little bit of stress off their everyday lives,” says Nikita Fowler, Outreach and Evaluation Manager for NMFA. A first-time visitor to Alaska, she was spending the entire week supporting the kids during camp.
“They are some of the strongest kids I have ever met,” Nikita says, “and I am honestly just honored to be an adult in their circle.”
Counselor Caidyn Declouette, aka Walrus, agrees with that sentiment. “These kids are really resilient, and really brave,” she says. “When you’re a kid, you don’t realize that you’re serving in this [military] family. You just go along for the ride.” At camp, she says, they get to their see that their contributions matter.
Caidyn (left) with a camper. Two years ago, Caidyn was a camper at Operation Purple® Camp. This summer, she’s a counselor!
And she would know. Before she was a counselor, Caidyn was a military kid who traveled solo all the way from Florida to Alaska to attend Operation Purple. “I was a little nervous,” she said about arriving to camp two years ago. “Then my counselors helped me get through it. We had so many adventures and I just connected with other kids that were going through the same thing as me.”
She calls it a full-circle moment to return as a counselor and is excited to now be a part of helping bring these kids together.
Returning to the activity field, youth volunteers with the Alaska National Guard Youth Council are guiding campers through each obstacle. They’ll be back at Camp K later in the summer for their own week of camp, but today they are military kids supporting military kids!
Youth volunteers with the Alaska National Guard Youth Council volunteered to run this annual obstacle course this year for Operation Purple® Camp.
Molly McBride, a recent high school graduate and Operation Purple camp alumni, is the president of the youth council. She says it’s fun to come back and see these kids, because “I see myself in them a lot.”
An annual tradition for Operation Purple, the obstacle course this year featured eight challenges in which groups of five had to worked as a team to complete. Molly says it was designed to encourage the campers to learn communication and build skills they can use later in life.
“It’s a super big thing at our camps,” Molly says. “We call them MTS—master resiliency trainings.”
Campers navigate a team obstacle at Operation Purple® Camp.
Talking with the campers, you quickly see this resilience within them. They share many of the same comments that most campers do—they love Gaga ball, the counselors are fun, the lake is cold but they’re eager to do the Polar Plunge.
But then they offer something more vulnerable—an understanding for what it really means to be at Operation Purple:
“I’ve met people that have gone through hard times. I’ve met people who I really feel like we’ve got a lot in common.”
“I think this is a good program because there are people that have experienced parents going away for long periods of time and sometimes you can relate to that.”
“It’s kind of cool to talk to her about that [their fathers leaving for training], being in the same situation, and seeing how we feel about it.”
“You get to learn so many different things and you learn how to socialize. You learn how to be away from the people you’re usually with every single day.”
A parent takes a photo of campers while waiting for the bus to Camp K.
Parents echoed these feelings in the post-camp survey:
“I learned she is resilient and steps outside of her comfort zone.”
“This camp helps to make friends and memories with kids who understand the difficulties of being a military kid and they accept them for who they are.”
“I can see a confidence shift in my older daughter in her ability to make new friends.”
“[She] learned it was ok to be a kid. She’s a teen and has a hard time letting loose.”
For a closer look at the magic from Operation Purple® Camp 2026, watch the video below or scroll down to view a gallery of photos from the week.
Thank You
Thank you to the National Military Family Association for your partnership in supporting Alaska’s military families.
Thank you to the Alaska National Guard Child & Youth Program for volunteering to provide campers with such a fun activity.
And a huge thank you to all the supporters who helped make it possible for 87 campers to attend Operation Purple® this year at no cost:
