Click on the video link to see a special thank you message from Cooper Center Director Colin "Jackrabbit" Waite. We raised $20,001, and 112 donors showed their support for Cooper during this campaign. The center will now be able to offer a full slate of environmental learning programs with its full complement of educational staff. Field trip registration is well under way and more than a dozen requests have been received in less than 24 hours! Be on the lookout for an invitation to a special donor recognition event at Cooper later this fall, and keep in touch with our efforts on our website, http://coopercenter.arizona.edu, on Facebook at Cooper Center for Environmental Learning (Camp Cooper), and on Twitter @CCJackrabbit. Thank you for your generosity and support over the past few months, and we look forward to your continued involvement in our efforts. #SupportCampCooper.

Welcome to the Cooper Center for Environmental Learning (Camp Cooper) crowdfunding campaign! Our goal is to raise $20,000 for operations and staffing between now and midnight on July 31st!

We raised $420 in our first day - thank you to each of our early donors! We'll need to average just under $400 per day to reach our goal, so we're off to a strong start! Make your gift today and please share our campaign so that we can reach all those Camp Cooper alumni and supporters of environmental learning!

Click on the video to hear from Jackrabbit about how things are going so far!

Hear about the value of Cooper from the people it impacts the most - teachers, students, and families of the schools we serve.

“Cooper has been providing Tucson-area students and teachers with high-quality, hands-on experiences for learning about the Sonoran Desert for many decades. As a teacher with 28 years of experience in TUSD, I have witnessed my elementary students’ excitement and engagement in their own learning, at a site so thoughtfully set aside by its founders for this purpose. These children, some of them now adults, are sure to be our best advocates for the protection of our beautiful and unique natural surroundings in the future. Thank you, Cooper!”

– Ellen Murphy, 5th Grade Teacher, Davis Bilingual Elementary School

Please help us to provide these experiences for the coming year and beyond! If you have already made a gift, thank you, and please share our need. If you haven't pledged your support yet, now is the time when your gift is needed.

As we begin the third week of our crowdfunding campaign, we have raised $1,630 towards our goal of $20,000. Our second week brought in just over $400 total.

If Cooper's field trip registration were to begin today, we would be unable to offer our 3-day middle school program, Sunship III. While our single-night programs and 3-day Earthkeepers experiences would go on in a relatively normal fashion, Sunship III requires more staffing to carry out. Cooper staff work with middle school students from 7am until 9pm in an effort to take full advantage of each student's time at the center.

Sunship III may be Cooper's most challenging program to offer, but it is also its most rewarding. All of Cooper's programs follow the philosophy of positive experiences in nature, basic ecological understandings, and reducing each participant's use of energy and natural resources. Middle school students are at the optimal age for this type of experience, and the program builds on the idea that each student will make more and more choices for themselves as they transition from childhood into adulthood. Many of these choices will have impacts on the environment, either directly or indirectly. After 3 days and 2 nights at the Cooper Center, Sunship III participants embark on a Quest in our local community. One piece of this Quest involves interviewing businesses, organizations, and individuals that are using energy and natural resources wisely, demonstrating care for natural places and things, and developing a deeper personal relationship with the earth. Each student also visits three natural places to build a stronger relationship with nature for themselves, and they participate in community action as well. Once these Quest tasks are completed, each student crafts their own personal lifestyle based on what they've learned during the program. It takes hard work and determination on the part of the student, their teacher, and the Cooper Center team, but the rewards can be enjoyed for the rest of each student's life.

To cancel this program for the upcoming school year would be heartbreaking. We already have schools and teachers excited to participate this fall, and we don't want to disappoint them. There are very few field trip programs that focus on middle schoolers, and it is a critical age in the developmental process.

Please help us jump start this program with a gift to the campaign today. Again, if you've already made your own contribution, please share this with friends and family who can join our campaign. If you haven't yet made your own contribution, now is the time. Every little bit helps. Cooper thrives in large part thanks to its history and the over 130,000 people who have experienced it over the years. Let's spread the word and bring those memories to our next generation of students.

From the Desert,

Jackrabbit

Click on the video to hear how things are going on the campaign!

For the latest news about our campaign and everything that's going on at Cooper this summer, click here!

Camp Cooper Director Colin Waite thanks donors and asks for your support in the final days of the center's crowdfunding campaign. Watch the video and please share it with friends and family. We're less than $3,500 from meeting our goal!

#SupportCampCooper with your donation today at https://crowdfund.arizona.edu/cooper.