How to Organize a Club Camping Trip

Almost every club camps more than once a year, and camp is where the Pathfinder fulfills much of the class and honor requirements. The difference between an unforgettable weekend and a Sunday of nervous phone calls is rarely the location or the budget: it's the calendar. Those who start early arrive whole.

This guide is for the club board. It brings together what the Pathfinder Club Administrative Manual (South American Division, 2020 edition) requires about camping with what the routine of a Brazilian club demands in practice: a reverse timeline, roster division, adult ratios, documentation, and the hour-by-hour Friday-to-Sunday schedule. The tent, site, and campfire portion is in our guide on how to set up a camp.

A note before we start: where the manual sets a number, we give you that number. Where it only lists the task without setting a deadline, we say plainly that the date is a practical suggestion — not a rule. Data verified on July 12, 2026.

🗓️How Far in Advance Should You Start Organizing?

The manual doesn't leave this to personal taste. In describing camp planning, it states that, for the best results, the work should begin at least three months in advance, so that everyone can properly fulfill their roles. Ninety days, then, is the floor — not a luxury.

In that same section, the manual lists what the Club Executive Committee needs to settle: choosing the camp model (recreational, instructional, fixed, or mobile), providing the club's physical, technical, and spiritual preparation, visiting the site and scouting it, dividing tasks among the leadership, calculating costs, listing what each Pathfinder should and shouldn't bring, notifying and gathering the parents, requiring a signed permission slip for every minor, and hiring transportation from a reputable company — always with insurance for everyone.

During the site visit, the manual requires checking very concrete things: the distance to the hospital, police, and fire department; whether there is drinking water and how hazardous the water sources are; whether the trees provide shade or threaten to fall; whether there is cell signal (it calls the cell phone the possible best piece of rescue equipment); the emergency routes; whether there's enough space for the number of participants; and, of course, the owner's permission.

The table below turns that list into a countdown. Pay attention to the Basis column: only three deadlines are actually written in the manual (the three months, the three weeks for the devotional, and the evaluation within a week afterward). The others are a practical distribution of tasks the manual requires but doesn't pin to a date. Adapt this to the size of your club.

Reverse timeline for a club camp. Deadlines marked "practical" organize tasks the manual requires but does not assign a date to.

📝Who Authorizes the Camp — and What Happens if No One Does?

Here live the three documents that separate an organized club from a legal headache. The first is church authorization. When it comes to overnight activities, the manual is explicit: even if the program is already in the annual plan approved by the Church Committee at the start of the year, you still need its permission close to the event date. If only a single unit is going, the Club Executive Committee's authorization is enough — as long as the Church Committee is informed.

This is not a formality. The ARM annual insurance, according to the manual itself, covers only regular meetings and events authorized by the local church committee. Without that vote, the club may be camping without coverage. We explain what's covered and what isn't in how the annual insurance works.

The second document is guardian authorization. The manual requires a signed permission slip from every minor participant, plus prescriptions, medications, and instructions for any special needs — all gathered into a safety folder that travels with the leadership. Adventist Risk Management, the church's risk manager, adds to that list a medical treatment consent form and each participant's history of allergies and conditions.

The third is Brazilian law. Article 83 of the ECA (Law 8,069/1990), as amended by Law 13,812/2019, states that no child or adolescent under 16 may travel outside the municipality (comarca) where they live, unaccompanied by parents or guardians, without judicial authorization. The law itself opens two exceptions: when the destination is a comarca adjoining the one of residence, within the same state or the same metropolitan region; and when the minor travels accompanied by an ascendant or collateral relative up to the third degree, with kinship proven by document, or by an adult expressly authorized by the father, mother, or guardian.

In club practice, it's the second exception that solves the problem: guardians authorize in writing an adult from the leadership to travel with their child. The ECA text doesn't mention notarization, but many clubs, transport companies, and Children's Courts ask for it anyway — confirm with your Association or Mission and, if the destination is far, with the Children's Court of your comarca before printing the forms.

An honest note about tools: member registration, the official medical form, and the annual insurance happen in the SGC, the church's Club Management System. That's irreplaceable — no outside app counts as an official record or as a policy. What a support system like Desbravai does is the rest: building rosters, tracking who has already turned in a permission slip, splitting the menu by unit, and notifying families. Those are different things, and it's worth knowing which is which.

👥How Many Leaders per Pathfinder?

Here you need to separate two layers, because they tend to get confused. The first is the official club structure in South America: the manual requires every unit to have 6 to 8 Pathfinders, grouped by sex and age range, with each unit coordinated by a counselor and, at most, one associate counselor — a man for boys' units, a woman for girls' units, all of legal age. The real ratio at a camp grows out of that design. Learn more in the unit system.

The second layer is the safety recommendation by activity type, published by Adventist Risk Management. It's important to be transparent: the South American Division's Administrative Manual does not publish a numeric adult-to-Pathfinder ratio table. The numbers below come from two ARM safety materials, both written in English for the North American Division, and serve as a good-practice reference — not a South American rule. Your Association or Mission may have its own guidance — ask first.

It's worth noting that the two ARM materials don't use the same yardstick. The 2021 text on Pathfinder outings speaks of at least 1 adult per 6 as a general floor, tightening to 1 per 4 on trails and 1 per 2 in the water. The 2018 text reasons by risk level and even allows 1 per 12 for low-risk activities. These aren't contradictory numbers by accident: the 2021 figure is the floor for a club outing; the 2018 figure varies with what the activity demands. When in doubt, use the tighter number.

What applies across both layers, without exception, is the two-adult rule. The manual requires leaders to avoid being alone with a minor, that no Pathfinder be disciplined without visual contact from another adult aware of the situation, that Pathfinders be supervised at all times, and that no minor be handed over to any adult other than the father, mother, or legal guardian without express written permission. ARM reinforces the same rule and adds: including inside the vehicle. We cover it all in child protection at the club.

The first two rows are South American Division rules. The rest are Adventist Risk Management safety recommendations published in English for the North American Division, useful as a reference — confirm the guidance for your Field.

🧭How to Divide the Rosters: Who Does What?

The manual solves the most common camp problem — everyone assuming someone else already handled it — with a division into eight work areas, each with a person appointed by the Club Executive Committee, who then checks on the progress of each section. If your board is small, one person can take on two areas; what can't happen is an area with no owner.

Beyond the eight areas, three rotating rosters keep the camp running day to day: the duty officer (the leader on duty, responsible for civics and overall order that day), the kitchen roster, and the inspection roster. On the kitchen, the manual allows the club to have a central kitchen with a cook, but requires that, at least once a year, there be a camp where the units themselves cook — because several class and honor requirements depend on it, from the menu to where the trash goes.

Lock in the rosters in writing and post a copy in the kitchen tent and another on the notice board. A roster agreed verbally is a roster nobody follows.

The eight work areas of a camp, according to the Pathfinder Club Administrative Manual (SAD). The mistakes column is editorial observation.

⏰What Does the Friday-to-Sunday Schedule Look Like?

The schedule template printed in the manual spans four days, Thursday to Sunday. Since most Brazilian clubs camp Friday to Sunday, the schedule below compresses that template into three days, keeping the blocks and the people responsible that the manual suggests: wake-up call, devotional with the chaplain, meals with the kitchen, civics with the duty officer, lights-out with the associate directors, and a staff meeting with the director, every night.

There's a non-negotiable constraint in this compression. Among the things that can never happen, the manual lists leaving for camp on Friday afternoon in a way that pushes setup into Friday night. Translation: on a Friday-to-Sunday camp, the bus leaves in the morning. If your departure is only possible in the afternoon, the honest format is a cantonment or a Saturday-night-to-Sunday outing — not a camp with the tent going up after sunset.

The times below are a starting point based on the official template. Adjust them to your region's sunset time and the time of year — in winter, Saturday begins well before 6 p.m.

Friday-to-Sunday schedule adapted from the Administrative Manual's (SAD) four-day template. Adjust the times to your region's sunset.

🕊️What Changes on Sabbath at Camp?

Practically every club camp spans the Sabbath, and the manual devotes an entire section to the topic. The logic is simple: the commandment doesn't change scope just because the club is out in the wild instead of in the city. The manual even says that many clubs create friction with the Church Committee precisely by failing to honor the Sabbath at camp.

The list of things that can never happen is explicit in the manual: going camping or on another outdoor activity on Sabbath; leaving Friday afternoon in a way that pushes setup into Friday night; exhausting hikes; instruction in activities that aren't spiritual in nature (it cites knots, drill, and campfire-building as examples); water games; social-hour-type games; and any kind of sport.

The counterpart is Friday as preparation day. The manual says to avoid, as much as possible, gathering firewood, pitching tents, securing drinking water, and cooking hard-to-prepare food on Sabbath. All of that falls into Friday's roster — including Saturday's lunch, made ahead. Use our guide on camp cooking to build a menu that holds up to being made in advance.

So what goes in its place? The manual suggests singing choruses around the campfire, telling Bible stories, studying the Sabbath School lesson, playing nature-based games, completing the spiritual-section requirements of the classes, resting (one or two hours after lunch, it says, is already enough at that age), holding a special, engaging worship service, and serving tastier food. The council fire, the manual says, is ideal every night and mandatory at least on the last one.

One planning detail that saves the Sabbath: request the devotional slot from the unit at least three weeks in advance. The manual states that a unit should never be asked, once already at camp, to lead the devotional. They need to learn how to do it — and they need time to prepare.

🚻Kitchen, Restrooms, and What to Do After It's Over?

Three areas account for most of a camp's avoidable incidents: food, sanitation, and the wrap-up. Start with the menu. The manual is direct: since the club is a church department, it should follow the recommendation not to use meat at camp. Each unit can put together its own menu based on members' preferences, but leadership supervises — and the menu needs to include food from every group, avoiding the classic trap of instant noodles becoming the main meal.

On hygiene, the manual sets down details that are easy to forget: cooking water must be filtered or boiled, even if it comes from a clean stream; food doesn't sit on the ground or in the sun; dishes are washed right after the meal; organic waste goes into a hole about 20 cm wide by 40 cm deep, covered with dirt; and dry trash goes back home.

For the restrooms, two numbers deserve a spot on the infrastructure team's notes: latrines stay at least 15 meters from water sources and 100 meters from the tents, screened by vegetation and non-transparent tarps, with tools and lime on hand to cover the waste. The manual also requires checking the wind direction — it should blow over the camp first and only afterward over the latrines — and places building them among the first things to do upon arrival.

At the end, two routines close the loop. The first is the fine-tooth-comb sweep: after everything is packed up and loaded onto the vehicle, the group combs the site and leaves it absolutely clean, if possible better than it was found. The second is the evaluation. The manual asks that, within one week at most after the camp, while memories are still fresh, the whole Regular Committee meet and evaluate the program in the physical, mental, and spiritual areas, with questions like: were the contests planned and safe? Were all the planned class requirements taught? Was there balance among the three areas?

Keep that evaluation in writing. It's what lets the next camp start 90 days out already halfway there — instead of from zero.