Interview with Jeff Coury, President and Genevieve Coury, Volunteer
The following is an interview conducted with Jeff Coury and Genevieve Coury. Jeff Coury is the current President of the Board of Fostering Heroes, and was also the Executive Director during Future Heroes Camp 2025. Genevieve was an active volunteer at Future Heroes Camp 2025 and led many of the activities with the youth. Responses have been edited slightly for readability. The audio recording of the interview can be found here in an episode of the podcast Theseus’ New Boat.
Future Heroes Camp is the yearly summer camp hosted by Fostering Heroes for teens in foster care, primarily those residing in group homes.
How did summer camp come to be?
Jeff: A summer camp has been around working with foster youth and group homes for about a decade and originally was formulated just as a one night opportunity to take foster youth out of the group homes and spend a fun day away. We are in Arizona and we had to do it in the summer when the youth are out of school. We hosted it in the Phoenix area, which as you can imagine is a bit warm. Through the years we moved to a couple different places and landed in Wickenburg. Wickenburg was a little bit cooler than the Phoenix area, which was quite nice. We were in a ranch out in the middle of the desert, a nice little hotel so we could get away from some of the heat in the swimming pool and air-conditioning.
We continued this with the youth for many years. After many years, Fostering Heroes took over the camp and it really became one of our earliest initiatives. We continued to host it in Wickenburg similar to the way it had been done for several years. We hosted it that way for two years and were kind of frustrated or challenged by the fact that it’s pretty darn hot and if we weren’t in the pool some of the activities and other things we did were challenging just because it’s 110° outside. So, we were looking for an opportunity to find a new place and we were able to find the camp Whispering Hope in Payson, Arizona (or right outside of Payson). This put us up at about 4500 feet of elevation where it was quite a bit cooler. I think Phoenix was right about 100° F during this year’s camp and camp was in the 80s. It was really nice to have about a 15° difference in weather and allowed us to do a lot of new and fun outdoor activities.
One of the centerpieces to our camp has always been horseback riding. The ranch we went to in Wickenburg was actually a living, acting, and fully-functional dude ranch so we centered a lot around the horses. With the new opportunity at Whispering Hope we had horses, a splash pad, fields to play in, classrooms, and more. It really allowed us to upgrade and in that upgrade we also chose to bring more youth at a time. Previously it was one group home at a time. Now we were able to bring up 6-8 group homes together merging different agencies and bringing together kids that don’t often, or ever, see each other. It gave us an opportunity to meet new people, have a new camp experience, and bring in new activities. And we did that over 3 days. So we still had horseback, but we also had education. We still did campfire, but it was in a different light and we had movie night. There were just some really cool opportunities and we were able to go much deeper with youth because we were able to spend a full three days with them.
What activities did you enjoy doing most with the youth?
Genevieve: I don’t think there was one specific activity. I just enjoyed hanging out with the kids, talking with them, and seeing them enjoy horseback riding. Each kid enjoyed something different and it was really amazing to see – some enjoyed horseback riding, some enjoyed archery, some enjoyed art – just the diversity in what they enjoyed.
Jeff: I’m going to interrupt and jump in on that one because it was just really neat, as Genevieve just pointed out, how we were able to individualize some of it. Not intentionally, like the activity was designed for that specific individual youth, but because we had such a breadth of opportunities when interviewing the kids at the end it was like “What was your favorite?” and if you interviewed 5 children all five had a different activity that they did that was better or even if it was the same what they got out of it or enjoyed most about that individual activity was different. It was as unique as each individual that was there.
Did you have any youth that had experienced the previous camp up in Wickenburg and were now experiencing the new & improved camp? If so, how did they respond to these changes?
Jeff: We did have a few youth that had been there before and it was really positive. Lots of them said that this is so much better because primarily the weather was better. A few did enjoy the added activities. Most of the added activities were such a new experience that it was difficult to compare with the previous camp. But I think the overall consensus was we had upgraded camp.
Genevieve: I think the kids really said it was much better weather, they enjoyed getting to be there another night, and getting to do more stuff than just the 24 hours they were at the previous camp.
Jeff: I think it’s fair to say to a T almost every single kid at the end of camp was disappointed that even three days had passed, because they wanted more.
What does a typical day at Future Heroes Camp look like?
Genevieve: They woke up, some of them went on a morning adventure like a walk or a hike if they got up early. Others laid in bed and got up for breakfast around 8. They got a really amazing breakfast and then we started activities and they kind of stayed in their group home but went activity to activity and played and had fun. During any downtime they went out to a field and kicked around a ball or did arts and crafts. In the middle of the day we had lunch and then some more activities after lunch and then just some free time before dinner. After dinner we would sit around the campfire or watch a movie before bed.
Genevieve, what was your favorite part of volunteering? What was the volunteer experience like?
Genevieve: My favorite part was just talking to the kids. Some of the older ones were finishing up high school and looking for that future and getting to talk with them about what they want for their future, possible next career, or where they wanna be in a year. It was really amazing just to talk to them and help them figure that out.
Jeff, since you work with youth not just at summer camp but throughout the year, what do you think is the most impactful part of summer camp that youth carry with them from the experience?
Jeff: It sounds a little trivial, but ultimately it’s having the opportunity to do something outside of the group home. Life in the group home is not always exciting. It doesn’t have a lot of change. It’s kinda mundane day-to-day. It’s the same again and again. It was just really cool to give them the opportunity to get out of the house and experience something new. As for individual activities, I already shared that each of the youth got something different out of it, which was phenomenal. Some of the youth had never ridden a horse and some were so scared of the horse, and the wranglers helped them get past their own fears and do more. Especially when the ladies were up there, several of them who just spent hours and hours doing the art projects with a partner organization that does therapeutic art and it was super fun just to see. Any moment they got free they were back with the group that was doing art, exploring and learning and creating far beyond our intentions. If we had 3 art projects available they would do those art projects but then it was unbelievable what new art projects the children actually would invent. It was really cool.
Another activity we did was creating a job or business. One of our cofounders put together a program where the youth designed their own business the way they wanted to do it and the way they thought they could make a career for themselves and it was just unbelievable. The concepts that they came up with and the things they wanted to do whether it was being a hairdresser or – surprising to me – a financial planner. One of the groups wanted to build a financial planning business and I was like “Wow, a couple 15-year-olds are already looking at how they can create a financial planning business!” It was really fun to see some of those different things that came out.
Genevieve, what kind of advice would you give to someone interested in volunteering at an event like this?
Genevieve: Do it! Don’t worry about going into it knowing what you’re doing, just do it and have fun with it. You’re there for the kids. Stuff doesn’t always go as planned and just roll with it. Have fun!
Jeff, what kind of continued improvements can we expect in future iterations of camp? What should kids and volunteers expect in future years?
Jeff: In future years we have so many cool things. We’re looking at what we did this year that worked and what we did this year that needs some improvement and upgrading. Obviously some of the time there’s activities that just didn’t resonate with the youth the way us old fuddy-duddies that designed it thought it would. We’re really taking what we learned and just really enhancing it. If we can look at, even the jobs process that we talked about a little bit, the building of the business: we’re gonna bring what we learned this year and allow them to learn more about it. For example, some of the youth just wanted to design a logo for their business and look at it from a marketing standpoint. So we can look at when you start a business, it’s not just marketing, it’s also sales, it’s the product, it’s financial planning and budgeting. There’s so many cool things that we can bring to them so that they can expand and start to get a fuller understanding of what it means to run a business. So many little things like that will improve the experience for youth.
From the standpoint of our volunteers, we had an awesome group this year. One of our challenges was the first year at this camp there were a lot of things we didn’t know, and you can’t always fix what you just didn’t know. We’ve already put together things to make the experience for our volunteers to be enhanced and some of the challenges that we faced that the volunteers needed to be patient around will be eliminated. So, it’s just gonna be overall experience will probably be tenfold improved simply by learning what we didn’t know before and improving upon those.
Any final thoughts?
Jeff: I was thrilled across the board. For my standpoint as Executive Director (at the time) and President of the Board, everything that happens throughout camp was an awesome experience for me. From witnessing how our volunteers interacted to what we learned about better interaction with the volunteers and the youth. It was super awesome to see how everybody came together and everybody worked together and made such an impactful event happen for the youth.
Genevieve: I agree with all of that. It was a really amazing camp. Kids took away a lot and I think volunteers took away a lot.