For over 70 years, Sherwood Forest Camp has been transforming lives through camp experiences. The Camp is nestled on 487 acres, just 100 miles south of St. Louis, in Lesterville, Missouri. Campers can explore forests, meadows, a 15-acre lake, creeks, a mud cave, and nearby state parks. Facilities include cabins, dining hall, multi-purpose building, health center, swimming pool, climbing tower, teams challenge course, archery range, campfire circles, and barn which houses creative arts, performing arts, and outdoor living skills.

Sherwood Forest Camp serves the greater St. Louis metropolitan area (Missouri and Illinois) and is a member agency of the United Way of Greater St. Louis. Sherwood Forest is exceptional in its capacity to establish and sustain long-term relationships with its campers, their families, and the social agencies and schools that serve them. Long-term relationships formed at Sherwood Forest are a powerful influence on economically disadvantaged children looking for support, stability, consistency, and direction. Over half of the graduates of our Leadership Training Program voluntarily maintain their connection with Sherwood Forest. Of these, over 90% have risen from poverty and all are positive, productive, and engaged members of their communities.

An experience with Sherwood Forest reinforces long-term success by putting children and youth in contact with caring and supportive adults, having high expectations for achievement, offering opportunities for meaningful participation and connections with others, setting clear and consistent boundaries, and providing opportunities to learn important life skills.

For more than 70 years, the agency has been a pioneer in organized camping and was the first decentralized camp in the Midwest to promote the group process in democratic living. Among other notable accomplishments, SFC has made a significant contribution to organized camping through:

• The development of a leadership training program for adolescents in 1941;
• The initiation of the St. Louis area’s first outdoor education program in 1948;
• Racial integration and the inclusion of children with disabilities beginning in 1954;
• Development of a camp program for developmentally disabled children in 1961;
• The creation of a school year, follow up program (Continued Contact) for summer campers in 1974;
• Collaborative program for children with severe learning disabilities in 1984;
• Family Support Retreats for families who are homeless or in transition, beginning in 1990;
• The development of a model Teaching Healthy Habits program in 2002;
• Missouri’s only “Tango Tower,” one of twelve in the entire country, in 2004.

Sherwood Forest was one of twenty camps in the U.S. participating in groundbreaking research by Youth Development Strategies Inc. (YDSI) and the American Camp Association (ACA). This first-ever national study documented the impact of camp experiences on children, measuring program strengths and weaknesses using a youth development framework explaining positive transitions for adolescents to early adulthood.