2025 AWLA Summer Camp

The AWLA’s 2025 Summer Camp Begins June 9!

Summer is coming and that means another year of our paw-some summer camp! Join the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria for a series of week-long day camps, hosted by the AWLA’s Youth Programs Department.

Before registering for our Summer Camp, please carefully read the description below to make sure it is a good fit for your child.

We offer age-specific camp experiences for students aged 6 to 7, 8 through 10 and 11 through 13 years, giving attendees the opportunity to learn about animal welfare and care in their community. Camp will run Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. for all age groups. Please see the chart below for camp dates for each age group.  Campers should bring a lunch for their camp experience.

More About AWLA’s Summer Camp

Summer Camp is a fun and educational experience that allows campers to interact with adoptable shelter animals, learn from staff members, and participate in animal-themed arts and crafts activities. Camp Counselors consist of staff members as well as adult and teenage volunteers. 

Summer Camp activities consist of dog, cat and small animal interactions, and there will be time blocked off every day for either dog or cat recess. Campers will have the opportunity to interact with dogs and cats (or often puppies and kittens!) in a safe and structured environment. 

If your child loves arts and crafts, they will be sure to enjoy our camp! We have several different crafts scheduled for the week, including Pet Portrait painting, enrichment preparation (treats tubes, snuffle mats, busy bags), coloring, decorating cat carriers and bandanas, and making animal-themed headbands. Other activities will include pet trivia, guess-that-animal, silly animal videos and shelter scavenger hunts.

Summer campers also play a big role in helping our animals get adopted! They help by socializing animals and making them more comfortable with people, and creating eye-catching adoption posters to hang in the shelter to inspire shelter visitors to adopt. They also help make the animals’ daily lives enjoyable and stress-free by creating toys and treats for them, helping clean the small animal’s cages and giving them exercise and outdoor time.

If your child hopes to work in a shelter one day, they will have the amazing opportunity to hear from staff guest speakers who work in the shelter in the Veterinary, Foster, Animal Services and Behavior departments. They will gain hands-on experience with activities like cleaning kennels, clicker training, and handling surgical tools. They will even get to tour our fully equipped surgical van! They will come out of camp with a great overview of what working in the field is like.

There will be daily group discussions on important topics like spay and neuter, fostering, kitten aging, animal body language, an animal’s journey from arriving at the shelter to being adopted, and what to do if you see an animal that needs help in their community. We hope that they will go on to share this information with their peers to create a generation of educated and compassionate animal owners!

We can’t wait to have your child at the shelter this summer!

Camp registration is limited to 1 week per child to ensure as many campers as possible have an opportunity to participate. If you are interested in registering a child for multiple weeks, you can request they be placed on a waitlist and you’ll be contacted if a slot is available. Email youthprograms@AlexandriaAnimals.org to be placed on the waitlist.

Questions? Please email youthprograms@AlexandriaAnimals.org.