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FAMILY CAMP 2024

We are excited to announce that Transracial Journeys Family Camp 2024 registration is open!

This year's theme is - Intentional Inclusivity: Creating a Bright Path to Community and Belonging.  

As always, we will create space for deep learning and development as well as moments for joy and connection.   Together, we will work to soften the sharp edges of exclusion that come with adoption, family separation and differences of race.  Together, with our amazing presenters, counselors and staff, we will co-create the brightest path to belonging for the children entrusted to you through adoption, for you as parents and for your extended family.

Camp will be held August 1-4 at Ohio University and registration is now open!  Please note, we will only be accepting 40 families in total and last year we sold out in 48 hours.  A completed online registration and payment secures your spot at camp. We will create a waiting list once camp sells out.

Transracial Journeys was born out of the need for greater understanding of and support for transracially adopted persons and their families in all stages of life and sectors of society. Founded by an adoptive parent in 2013, Transracial Journeys began hosting a 4-day family camp for the Black and Brown adopted children and their white adoptive parents to come together to explore issues of adoption, identity, and race with the support of counselors for the children and outside speakers for the adults. Children and their parents found a safe space to have challenging discussions, friendships developed, and a geographically dispersed community took root.

Transracial Journeys Annual Family Camp continues to be our primary programming and highlight of the year. Families return year after year. New families join. Older campers became counselors-in-training and then counselors.

Post-Adoption Resources

As there are few resources in the adoption field that specifically provide post-adoption support for transracial families, Transracial Journeys has developed additional online and physical resources for families to successfully navigate issues all year long.

● Transracial Journeys Monthly Email Newsletter with articles related to the monthly themes connected to transracial adoption, celebrates Black excellence, and highlights books that integrate adoption into the story.  SUBSCRIBE TO OUR EMAIL NEWSLETTER

● Transracial Journeys Monthly Parent Meet-ups to talk with other adoptive parents about the monthly theme or adoption-related issues that are happening in your life. (Zoom link provided in our monthly email newsletter)

● Transracial Journeys/June-in-April Activity Deck has a card for each month of the year that connects with the monthly theme and poses corresponding questions, conversation starters, or prompts for having more regular and intentional conversations about adoption, identity and differences of race. The cards are designed for children to ask parents the questions and spark reflections and conversations. (Available for purchase)

● Transracial Journeys Annual Calendar features the monthly theme and images from the previous year’s annual camp. (Available for purchase)

● Transracial Journeys Consulting Support to organize a mini-Transracial Journey Camp in your area in collaboration with your local social service/post-adoption support agency. (Reach out to info@transracialjourneys.org)

Welcomes All Families

Transracial Journeys welcomes all families experiencing transracial adoption and recognizes that families come in all shapes, sizes, and colors — adopted, non-adopted, babies, children, teens, young adults, older adults, Black, Brown, White, single parents, two parents, straight, LGBTQ+, secular, religious, urban, small town, rural, and other diversities. Families who have attended camp in the past live in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

We are a volunteer board-led organization with a part-time executive director April Dinwoodie, who is a transracially adopted person and has worked professionally in the transracial adoption field, and a contracted part-time marketing professional. We hire counselors who are transracially adopted, guest speakers, and professional facilitators to provide a safe and transformational 4-day camp experience.

Make a difference in the lives of children and families experiencing transracial adoption and DONATE NOW!

Latest from Our Newsletter

Book Corner – May 2024

Reviewed by Rebecca Howe Monstrous, by Sarah Myer  Monstrous is a young adult graphic novel memoir written and illustrated by nonbinary comic artist and transracial adoptee Sarah Myer. The story is about Myer’s childhood years in the 1990s and early 2000s in rural Maryland, taking us from an imaginative and emotionally explosive early childhood, through an adolescence rife with bullying, racism, homophobia, ableism, mental health struggles and the protagonist’s reckoning with identity, how to stick up for themselves, take responsibility read more

Mothers’ Day

By Jennie Rosenstiel As I typed the first draft of this article, the grammar checker kept telling me I’d misspelled the name of the holiday. Again and again, it reminded me that it was Mother’s Day, not Mothers’ Day. It turns out that Anna Jarvis, the advertising executive responsible for the holiday’s modern incarnation, “was specific about the location of the apostrophe; it was to be a singular possessive, for each family to honour their mother, not a plural possessive read more

Sharp Edges of Exclusion that Come with Adoption, Family Separation and Differences of Race

by TRJ Executive Director, April Dinwoodie “Where is she from?” “Does she look like her dad?” “Do you know who her real parents are?”  These and other questions came hard and fast at my mom and me when we were out in a world that wants us to match and did not understand the realities of adoption, family separation, and the impact of trauma that comes with both.   As a kid, I never quite understood why folks were so interested read more

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