About Us

Edmund Rice Camps provide fun and exciting camps for children aged 8-12 who need a break due to social, financial or family reasons. Our camps aim to provide a fun-filled week of activities and challenges that encourage children to come out of their shells and realise their full potential. The diversity of children and leaders who come on camp creates a culturally enriched environment that explores, teaches and motivates positive behaviour, confidence, life skills, leadership amongst many other benefits.

Camps rely solely on volunteers aged between 17-25 years who are driven by passion and respect to care for young people. We provide a unique experience where the ratio of leaders to children is 1:1, providing an opportunity to learn self-worth through social skills and positive role modelling. There are no religious activities undertaken on Edmund Rice Camps Auckland.

Edmund Rice Camps Auckland has zero tolerance for any unacceptable behaviour which includes bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment.

More details about our camps can be found here

Our history

Edmund Rice

Edmund Rice (1762-1844) was an Irishman born in Callan. Edmund became a wealthy businessman in Waterford and at the age of 28, his wife died and he was left caring for his young daughter. He became more involved in social work and education focussing especially on the so poor of Waterford. He founded and ran a school for poor children firstly in his home and eventually started a Catholic religious order as others joined his project. During his life, he established educational schools and projects in Ireland, England and Gibraltar. Projects associated with his vision and inspiration later spread to Australia, Africa, India, South America, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Timor Leste, Philippines, the United States, South America, New Zealand and Cook Islands, Fiji and Tonga.  Currently in Auckland, there are two schools in the Edmund Rice tradition: Liston College (Henderson) and St Peter’s College (Grafton). In 1996 Pope John Paul II declared Edmund with the title “Blessed” recognising his life and good works.

A more detailed story of Edmund Rice can be found here here

Edmund Rice Camps

The first Edmund Rice camp was held in Melbourne in 1982. Staff and senior students from Parade College ran a holiday camp programme for Vietnamese Boat children living in Melbourne.

In 1990, a group of senior students at Kavanagh College Dunedin started Edmund Rice Camps in Dunedin and in 2002 with help from Dunedin camps a group of senior secondary school and tertiary students mainly associated with St Peter’s College and under the leadership of Ben Skeen established Edmund Rice Camps Auckland. The first camp which was for children from Auckland Catholic primary schools who needed a break, was held at Camp Adair, Hunua.

Since those early days Edmund Rice Camps Auckland has continued to grow and develop as an entirely voluntary organisation involving of young people as leaders providing a holiday fun experience for children who need a break.

Edmund Rice Camps now operate all over Oceania. If you would like to get involved in another camp in either Australia or New Zealand, you can find more information here

Our Funders

As a registered, not for profit charity, Edmund Rice Camps Auckland relies on grants from external funding bodies to be able to run the number of camps that we do each year. We would like to make an acknowledgement to the following organisation for the grants that they have provided us over the past year:

• NZ Lotteries Grant Board
• Christian Brothers Oceania Province
• Catholic Caring Foundation
• Perpetual Guardian Trust
• Community Organisation Grants Scheme
• The Trusts Community Foundation
• Foundation North

Our Policies

Edmund Rice Camps Auckland has the following policies available on request:

• Cultural Inclusion Policy
• Volunteer Staffing Policies
• Commitment to Quality Services Framework
• Risk Management Framework
• Child Behaviour Management Framework
• Child Protection Framework
• Complaints Procedure
• Zero Tolerance for Unacceptable Behaviour Policy (Discrimination, Sexual Harassment and Bullying)