Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine - February 2000
Mom: Please Send Rocket Fuel

Bibi Schweitzer left the bug spray and marshmallows at home when she attended Camp Start Up, in Wellesley, Mass., a couple of summers ago. What the camp did ask the 14-year-old to bring was a passion for starting a business. Start-Up, a girls' entrepreneurship camp, offered seminars on finance and marketing taught by women MBAs, plus networking with businesswomen at a power lunch and games that taught teamwork. The two-week session "was really different, but I liked it a lot better than ordinary camp," says Schweitzer, of Larchmont, N.Y., who wants to become the chief executive officer of a fashion or cosmetics company.

Sports and arts and crafts still hold sway among the 8,000 summer camps in the U.S., but specialized programs such as Camp Start-Up's are booming. The reason: Kids are involved in more and varied activities, and at a younger age, then previous generations, says Nancy LaPook Diamond, co-founder of KidsCamps.com, a Web-based directory of camps. "The whole world has become specialized."