Blazing a Path to Inclusion

Every morning before breakfast at Brave Trails, the whole camp gathers at the flagpole. A different identity flag rises each day and, for a moment, nobody says anything.

“We don’t get the opportunity to see our identity flags raised very often,” says Jessica Weissbuch, co-founder and executive director. “So we raise it, and we take a moment of silence just to acknowledge that.”

Then hands go up. Campers say why that flag matters to them. Anyone trying on a new name or pronouns announces it. Snaps, shout-outs, and off to archery.

Brave Trails is a residential summer camp for LGBTQ+ youth ages 12 to 17. It started, as Weissbuch tells it, on a drive home from the movies in 2014 – she had just finished a master’s in clinical psychology and was working with queer youth at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Her then-partner had grown up loving summer camp. The question that night was simple: “What would we want as a kid?”

The answer: “A mix between your traditional summer camp and a queer youth leadership institute.” They charged friends $20 for backyard spaghetti to cover the 501(c)(3) filing fee and rented a site in Wrightwood for one week in 2015. “We said, if we get 15 kids, we will be happy,” Weissbuch recalls. “That first summer, we got
43 campers.”

Building LGBTQ+ Leaders

By year three the founders had quit their day jobs and wait lists hit 600 kids. Today Brave Trails runs three nine-day sessions in Southern California, one in the Atlanta area, and one on the East Coast, plus there are family camps, a backpacking program, and mental-health services.

Cabins are sorted by age, never by gender. Campers write their own community agreements and name their own cabins, revealed by skit on night one. The oldest group, the counselors-in-training, is the Unicorn Justice League (UJL), a name coined that first summer. Many UJLs return as staff.

The signature program is Passion to Action, which Weissbuch calls “our queer science fair.” Small groups pick a cause, build a project, and present it to the whole camp. One group researched hostile architecture, the bus benches built so unhoused people can’t sleep on them. Five projects a summer get a staff mentor and a full year to become realized.

Weissbuch has heard what that adds up to stated plainly. Jude, who arrived at 15 and joined the staff this summer, stopped her after an event: “I just need to thank you, because you saved my life.” Jude found a first therapist through Brave Trails. “Without that program,” they told her, “I don’t know if I would still be here.”

The camp is now renovating its Forever Home, 54 acres in Santa Clarita, aiming to open in 2028. Meanwhile, more than half of all applicants request scholarship aid. “You can help send one young person to Brave Trails,” says Rani DeMesme-Anders of the Change-Up Group, which leads fundraising initiatives with Brave Trails. “What they bring home, confidence, community, courage, and joy, is immeasurable.”