In short, to join the Lakewood Adventure Guides, you’ll need to:
- Read this whole post.
- Fill out the sign-up form and agree to the code of conduct and responsibility waiver.
- Register with the YMCA and pay the membership fee.
- Accept your invite to the member website.
After that, you’re in!
The Lakewood Adventure Guides event schedule generally follows the school year, with recruiting and sign-up in the late summer, but you can join at any time. The yearly cost is $40 per family paid to the YMCA. We try to keep many events free (smaller campouts, hikes, game nights). For bigger events (weekend campouts at YMCA camps, like Camp Fitch), there will be additional fees, and we often take collections for situational purchases, like pizza during an event. We also will ask for those that can to provide a small optional donation. This is purely optional, but these donations keep our events running smoothly and pays for incidental costs and events throughout the year, and making this optional helps more families join. For more info and some examples, see (Costs and Funding).
If you sign up during the typical sign-up period, you can come to our first big event, Induction Night, but once you’re a member you can see all the events and come and go as you please.
Sign-up Form
Fill out this sign-up form: Lakewood Adventure Guides Family Registration.
Register with the YMCA
Please also register for this year’s program through the YMCA: YMCA Program Registration. It costs $40 per year, and this is the only mandatory cost. We will ask for optional donations occasionally (What does everything cost?).
If you’ve never sign-up for anything with the Y, you’ll need to make an account before registering. Sorry, a lot of the info is redundant, but reach out if you have any problems. Joining Adventure Guides does not require a YMCA Membership, but you may be prompted to join at some point during registration. You can join the program as a “non-member”.
Accept Invite to Member Website
This website is our primary tool for making announcements and plans. It’s limited to members and alumni, and restricted to caregivers (no kids). By default, when you accept the invite, you’ll get notifications for new Events and Announcements, but you can use the site to change this.
After your registration is verified, you’ll get an invite email(s) so you can set up your account. Once you log in, you’ll be able to see the event calendar and all the discussions. We’ll also invite any other caregiver you listed during registration. If you’d like us to invite anyone else, just let us know.
More Information
Looking for more info about Adventure Guides? Check out these posts or contact us at ltnagymca@gmail.com.