Fostering Genuine Connections at Winners’ Camp with Jeannette Macaluso

Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back. And thanks for listening to the Team Lally real estate show home of the guaranteed sold program. We’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio. And if you have any questions, just give us a call it 7999596 or check us out online at Team lally.com.

ATTILIO: 
Well, hey everybody. If you’re a parent, and you have kids, and you’re like, how, how? just short of having their iPhones surgically removed from their hands, how do I put them in an environment where they’re going to be taught some awesome core values? Well, our guest today is the director of Winners’ Camp Foundation. She is a lifelong Hawaii resident from Kalama Valley. She attended Punahou school and Waldorf before heading to the University of Puget I don’t even know if I said that correct sound KCC her journey with Winners’ Camp began at age 15 During the first camp held there. They’re on site in 2000.

ADRIENNE: 
Her love her love for the camp led her to work in various roles through high school and college after stepping away to focus on her family she returned In the Winners’ Camp when it reopened in 2022, she successfully ran this spring break camp in 2023. We building a strong team and reestablishing her deep connection with the camp. Yeah, please welcome our guest Jeannette Macaluso, and I’m sorry Lusso I’m sorry if I mispronounce Macaluso.

JEANNETTE: 
It’s my husband Sicilian last name. Yeah. Macaluso. Welcome.

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome to the show. Hi, well,

ATTILIO: 
if you like super local, then your last name might be Bacaluso

JEANNETTE: 
people asked her like, is it Filipino? Yeah, no, he’s from Jersey. It’s Sicilian.

ATTILIO: 
Don’t do the Sicilian Filipinos.

ADRIENNE: 
So there you go. So Jeannette, we’re really excited to have you here on the show. We have had Delorese, the founder of Winners’ Camp on our show, several times. Adrienne’s kids have been to Winners’ Camp. My my two oldest are graduates and multiple attenders. Actually, this summer, my youngest is finally old enough to go and he’s, he was like really missing out when his brother and sister were going and really wanted to go and and now, you know, it’s like, they’re at that teenage year, and they don’t want to, you know, be separated from their video games and their phones. But he’s, he’s going and he’s gonna have fun.

ATTILIO: 
Well, what a wouldn’t it be? It’s

JEANNETTE: 
gonna be a good camp this summer. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
I know, you guys have drop off location. And what you do is you recommend just slow down to about two miles per hour and boot them out of the car and then drive away real fast. No, that’s not the drop off. So, you know, talk about this just hit him high right now hit him high right now, because this is a serious issue. I mean, psychologists have done studies on it now. And it’s been around long enough to people to now gather data, and it’s no longer anecdotal, the cell phones and social media and these kids and the adolescent brain. So talk about technology and Winners’ Camp. How does that work? I,

JEANNETTE: 
this last camp, empowered by other graduates who had been campers and leaders at the same time I was moms, they’re like, why or do you have cell phones? And I was like, right. Last spring break? We not we it was me. I said, I’m done no more. And I really empowered parents to say no, I kind of put it on them. And it was, you know, well, one of the main things we really focus on building a campus trust, yeah. And if they’re bringing their phones up, and they’ve still got this connection to home and friends, it makes it a lot harder for us to do that. So it’s that umbilical cord, cut it off. And this last camp, my leaders struggled, a couple of campers brought them up and nicely asked, they said, Kate, remember, we’re not doing cell phones. But it really enabled us to build trust, a lot faster and a lot deeper with the campers, you know, during breaks, they weren’t sitting down and on their phones zoning out to Instagram or taking pictures or you know, on tick tock. They were connected with each other, they were forced to talk to each other. That is so weird.

Right? Like

ADRIENNE: 
we used to do in the olden days before cell phones.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, you know, I’m 57. So I didn’t get a cell phone until I was probably 26, 27. I used to sell them. That’s why I got one.

ADRIENNE: 
I got my first cell phone. I think it was like 19 or 20. And

ATTILIO: 
I’ll tell you how back pain. Yeah, I’ll back you up. So I was I’ve been a scout leader, Boy Scouts, and we go on camps. And you’re like, No, and we’re and all the troops. I’ve been involved with no cell phones. And you know what the there’s only one, there was only one reason the boys would say that they needed the phones is because they needed it as the alarm to wake up. And we know that’s baloney. And I said don’t worry, I’ll make your master Leonardo is going to flip your 10 upside down. If you don’t get up. When it’s time to get up. I have an alarm. You don’t need your phones. And you’re like, What if we get lost your boy scouts?

JEANNETTE: 
What do you mean if you get lost figure it out?

ATTILIO: 
Yes. So I am yeah, had a lot

JEANNETTE: 
of hesitancy with especially my leads. We want to take pictures. So I bought digital camera. Nice. Each team, each team has a digital camera. So we’re gonna have the pictures. They’re gonna go up on a private, you know, up onto Google Photos. It’ll be a private link. I’m going to email it to the parents. They can find their pictures and have it the alarms was something my leaders said to me and I was like, Hey guys, watches a long time ago.

ATTILIO: 
Oh, Apple watches.

JEANNETTE: 
Like, I was like they I told no smartwatches No, I was just like, hey, look at these really cheap watches. And it is only one of us needs to be awake to wake all of you guys up. But it really I’ve just I tried to break down barriers. So whatever it is, and a long time ago when camp first started up here. We really didn’t have good service galleries and I had T Mobile phones or special phones and caught and it was okay because the kids at that time didn’t really have phones. But it really started sneaking in. And it was parents at that time who were kind of like, I need to be able to get a hold of my kid. And it was really the beginning of that helicopter parenting. And I really have seen over the last, you know, two decades, this pendulum shift of parenting, where we’re going back to things that work back to things that are better back to the roots that we had when we were kids versus this needs to constantly be connected and worrying about them. And I think COVID was a really good reset for that.

ATTILIO: 
Here’s the factual information. You know, all joking aside, there is I forgot what was the pod, I listened to a ton of podcasts. But there there is a researcher out there that a psychologist with like Harvard or MIT or one of these big colleges that did research on kids, and anxiety levels, because of the phones and social media is going through the roof. And suicide, teen suicide is through the roof. And it’s because of these Gosh, darn phones and social media. If you take a piece of paper and list all the positives and lists all the negatives, the negatives of these phones, way outweigh the positives. And so

ADRIENNE: 
here’s what’s happening. So they get to take a break from this for what’s

ATTILIO: 
happening. And see that they can survive. Yeah, organizations, this is what he said the number one way that we can stop this craziness with his phones, it started from about 2015 forward as it became very ubiquitous with the smartphones. And it’s only in these last years from 2015 to recently that they’re seeing the psychological negative effect of social media on these phones. And so what they’re saying is that the the schools out there, these organizations need to draw the line in the sand because the peer pressure, and the myths that parents have regarding their needing to get a hold of their child 24/7 is wrong. And so Australia, yep, no phones in schools, the entire country of Australia, England, the entire country of England, no phones in schools. So the US needs to follow suit. And and we just, it’s hard, because the principals will put it in place which they can at the DoD level, and then you’ll get some parent, wow. Ah, you know, I guess I need to get a hold on my child while they’re in math class, I want to be able to do that. Why teachers are having such a hard time competing with these phones. And so I’m glad that you’ve drawn the line in the sand. Yes,

JEANNETTE: 
yeah. And the surgeon general last week or two weeks ago, he is thinking about putting a warning label on social media platforms. And it’s probably the Jonathan Hite that had the warehouse. On the fifth ha IDT is his last name. And he’s a psychologist that’s been in times and everything, talking about it. And you know, I think the other part for kids, it gives them this artificial sense of connection. And this idea also that you’re supposed to be happy all the time. Yeah. And if you’re not getting those high input, comments, you happy? Yeah. You look for that. Yep. And especially during that brain development, in adolescence, where you’ve got a lot of neural pruning happening. So the brain hardwired, those types of connections and other connections that don’t get used, get cut, and you’re left with only wanting those type of inputs. Yeah. And that’s one of the things that we focus on at Campus, giving them other inputs. They’re out there doing the ropes, courses, they’re doing physical things. They’re learning things through team and through doing instead of just lecture. They’re just listening. They’re learning they’re

ATTILIO: 
working screen,

ADRIENNE: 
it’s a kennis. They do a lot of kinesthetic learning. Yeah. And they’re presenting and, you know, I just, you know, from a parent who’s had two teams go through it, at the end of the week. I mean, they’re so happy. And they’re proud of themselves and what they’ve accomplished, and they’ve made relationships with children that they may have never been connected to, to begin with. It’s been it’s a really great, very diverse group of children that attend. Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
So thank you to Jeannette to you and your crew up there for bringing together and to Della Reese galleries from way, way, way, way long time ago, getting this going and bringing back to our kids this wacky crazy thing called human connection,

JEANNETTE: 
Life. Life.

ADRIENNE: 
So Jeanette, well, I mean, I know like Delorese has been you know, she’s had been running this thing pretty much the driver like 30 years. Now, is she going to be able to make any appearances during 40

JEANNETTE: 
years? Yeah. 40 years next year will be our 40th year in decades. Nice. Yeah. So hopefully she’ll be here on registration day and day. Oh,

ADRIENNE: 
good luck. She’s an amazing inspirational woman. And, you know, I’m so happy that you know she started it and that she’s passed the baton over to you to you know, keep growing. This lady is

JEANNETTE: 
about she at our at our board meeting she brought her actual baton from high school. Oh, she used to do baton twirling.

ATTILIO: 
She did. You gotta you gotta understand, folks. Here’s a picture of Delorese, she’s about five feet. But she her personality is about. Yeah, so positive. So positive. This is a lady. She’s

ADRIENNE: 
like, the velvet hammer. Right? She’s so positive, but she will not walk past someone who’s like efficiency. Yeah. And she will address it, but in a very kind, but stern way where the kids are like, oh, and then they change. I like

JEANNETTE: 
to make sense to it. Yeah. Excellent. She’s driven, excellent home. And it’s when you when we talk about excellence. There’s no argument against it. You know, that excellence really is what drives everything forward and move everything forward in a positive manner. It’s not an accident. It’s purposeful. And you we talk about, it’s like, you can’t argue against it. Things that are facts. Oh, okay.

ATTILIO: 
I like the fact that on the opening night, you guys go up to that platform that overlooks mica pool and Waimanalo. And you throw all the cell phones that came into camp off of that. I really liked that event.

ADRIENNE: 
The kids don’t bring them because the parents are supporting parents. Yes.

JEANNETTE: 
Yeah. No, I and I sent a bunch of great articles to them. There’s some really good ones on our website. But it’s just, it’s empowering. And I think it’s also you know, giving parents power back as well. And letting parents know, like, you can do this. Yeah, okay. Your kids will be okay. And that’s another thing we really focusing on with our camps. So we usually have super Saturday’s. And since COVID, we really focused on rebuilding those. So every month, we have the graduates come up, and we’ve started parents seminars, so that we’re giving parents tools as well. And my mom’s been running those, she, she has her PhD in Family Resources. And so she’s doing a lot of stuff with parents. And it’s like, you know, the kids in our preschool and elementary school, you go on field trips, you’re talking to mom friends about teething, and problems that they’re having. But once at once adolescence hits and that middle schoolers, and you’re dropping them off down the road, and there’s no more field trips, you lose that parents will connection as well. And you kind of lose, am I doing this? Right? What should I be doing? Is it okay, if they’re slamming doors? What do I do with that happen? So really, we’re trying to work on rebuilding that parent connection and that parent network as well, so that they have a support system and additional tools. You know, instead of just Googling it, we’re talking to each other, and they’re really building socially. So

ADRIENNE: 
just for our listeners, we’ve got the summer camp coming up. That’s July 21, to July 27. So they still have time to sign up. How many spaces do you guys have open? Like, yeah,

JEANNETTE: 
we have eight, okay. Oh, spacious, and it’ll be gone. Yeah. It’s we’re going to be closing registration at 60. So right now we have 52. Kids, some of my leaders are a little freaked out. They haven’t ever done a camp this big. No, guys 25 It reads it, you know, at kids when they were on coli and out of Kula, and out of Makaha, they were running camps with 120 campers. I’m like, we we got this and get and that’s the other big part of you know, is our, our campus, we have camps for our leaders to give these guys leadership training skills. So you know, not the kids aren’t the guinea pigs, but this is how they learn. And they learn through having a team and being leaders. So

ADRIENNE: 
the leaders, the leaders were previous campers that got invited to come back, and and be a leader with among the

ATTILIO: 
youth training, youth leadership training, we

JEANNETTE: 
really rigorous training with them. And this year, thanks to a lot of community support. We have a whole group of Navy volunteers that have come up two months in a row and coming up this Sunday, to help us with a bunch of the cleaning and the yard work. And then we are rebuilding a lot of community partnerships. So we have zero roses coming up to clean all of our carpets and our chairs, which is great for us because we went on catchment so they bring their truck with all the water and they take care of everything. So we’re going to be focusing our leader training just on training pieces. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
the other connection I want to point out is with PSI personal self improvement Institute, so yeah, I’m a graduate and so I know for a fact because I see the emails I gotta get up there because I will make it to the next time. But our men’s leadership group we are always going up to winners camp to do service work. And so if you want to stay and give back to our community come to psi come through men’s leadership and service projects with winners camp. That

ADRIENNE: 
Delorese had gone through the PSI training and a lot of the coursework she had, you know, helped to incorporate that, you know, for the summer

ATTILIO: 
camp for adults. Yeah.

JEANNETTE: 
And they’ve been doing some kids programs, and they’re there’s a lot of similarities and overlaps, you know, PSI had started, it was all kind of the same time that camp started. Tony Robbins, a lot of this motivational work that people were doing in self improvement. It’s all kind of grown from that, like mid to late 70s. Era. So all the strands are, are really similar. And there’s so many programs now that all tie in the same thing. We just, we’re just on island with a ropes course.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. And I think that my prediction is that with, you know, you coming in there, not that it’s been different before, but I think there’s a definitely a need for this, and you’re gonna see more and more. You know, it’s like that I was there was a commercial I was watching and I thought it was a cell phone commercial. But it was a it’s a Toyota truck commercial. And what it was, is these two guys were drive and they would drive to a spot and they would go not here, then they back up and they go there another spot. No, not here. Then they went to the third spot. And they’re like, Yeah, this is where we want to camp. And the reason why they chose that camp spot, no cellular coverage, cellular coverage. So I tell you, you’re gonna see more and more of people want like, My prediction is if there already isn’t like I would love to go to a resort, where there’s no cellular signal at all. Zero no Wi Fi no nothing.

JEANNETTE: 
I looked into cell phone blockers before. I know the President’s got to pull the trigger. But then I was like, I honestly like I need to be able to get a hold of some parents. If something does happen. I was like, I have parents who call every now and then. And you know, we’re had one little girl, my little me. She’s 13 A girl last summer who are spring break, whose parents were nervous about sending her like, I don’t think she’s gonna want to go. She really was one of those kids who was dragged up the mountain as we say, but

ATTILIO: 
she was strapped to the top of the roof. Yeah,

JEANNETTE: 
no, yeah, they’re pushing her out of the car. No, I do not let parents go past a certain point. I’m like, this is where you say goodbye. We’re not lingering. You know, just like preschool like, this is goodbye. But they were talking. They were calling me every day. And she called them every night. And I finally on Tuesday, I said honestly, she’s a typical teenager. I said, she’s just giving you a hard time. Like next time she asks me to call you. Yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna talk to her. And I’m gonna instead of saying of course, here, you can talk to your mom. No problem. I was I was planning on it was I had my speech in my head. Stop giving your parents a hard time. Yeah, you’re smiling all day long. Let you know stop giving them so much flak from one mom to you. And but that day she just had that turned around. And he was bringing the breakthrough. She did it. Yeah. And it was when the in you just have to push hard enough. Like we say, You got to have a break down to break through. Right? You got to get to a point where all of a sudden you have this turn around. And on Wednesday, she Yeah, she had her crocs out and she was asking everyone to sign her crop. Oh, and I was just like, oh, so I tend to picture and I sent it took a picture, sent it to her parents and I was like, We did it. And she number what, like Saturday on our last day of camp was just in tears. Didn’t want to say goodbye to people wanted to stay. And her parents were like, I didn’t really believe you. But you know, thanks for sending the pictures. And they were like, we can’t believe it. It really and she was like our number one last spring break. Like, I always have one kid who really goes from that dragging them up the hill and dragging them down the mountain. And it really is a lot of our leaders are those guys who have those big transformative change.

ATTILIO: 
Yes, this is one of those camps for the kids going up the hill. And then at the last day of school, so yeah, let’s go do not

JEANNETTE: 
want to leave. That’s good. They drag out that parent day for like an hour and

ATTILIO: 
get out of here.

ADRIENNE: 
Out of here. Okay, so So Jeannette, we do. So we’ve got the camp that has about eight spaces left as of right now, when winners camp.org. You know, go to the website. Now I know for some families may already have had, you know, summer plans or vacations. There’s other camps that are available all the sessions. Let’s talk about those.

JEANNETTE: 
Our next camp will be until next spring. So spring break will be our next camp. I have the date set, but I don’t even remember that on the website. Do a fault. Yeah, there’ll be on our there’ll be on our website. As soon as it comes over. I’ll have it up there. But we I’d love to do a fall break camp. It just with school schedules it they never over Laurie. And we do Yeah, we I hope in the next year in this next year to do some weekend retreats, where it’s a scaled back version of our program. And we’ve been doing that with our graduates. So it’s, you know that continuity for our grads. Do it is really important. And that’s all included with our tuition. It’s not just a one off, you go to camp, you make these amazing relationships, you build so much trust, and then you’re gone and you go home. It’s really, really important. Yeah, yep. And we get the parents up here and we have lunch and they go on a hike. And we I we found like, and I know that having those follow up sessions really makes a difference out of our, our out of our kids that came to our spring break camp, only four can’t make it. And that’s because three of them are traveling and one has another sports conflict. So other than No, it sounds like come on. We’re so 100%

ATTILIO: 
No, you will get to 100%. But do you have will you take like a backup list because I know people they get they get it. They’re going up the hill parents, the kids won’t go.

JEANNETTE: 
They bail it last time anticipating putting kids on a waitlist. Okay, we had one kid who ended up having to fly to the mainland. So I will there’s only like maybe two or three that are wiggle room that ended up something ends up happening. But if you get them up here, my staff will make them stay. Gotcha. That’s not a problem. Yeah. I’ll be having a waitlist.

ATTILIO: 
The ropes, chains and duct tape that always is a good thing you know? And no, you just you have them you create an atmosphere where they want to stay. Yep.

ADRIENNE: 
So you got the fee of the summer camp spring break camp. You got some workshops throughout the year. And then you said something about a Super Saturday with like the parent community. Yeah. Now. All of these are for our graduates. Oh, okay. And then what about for the parents? So the parents come with the graduates or? Yeah, for Super Saturday’s. Yeah. Okay. So on all of this information is on winners. camp.org. They can find out about the events.

JEANNETTE: 
Yeah, yes, they can. Yeah, and we do a lot of community events as well. So we, especially this year, we’ve gotten back into a lot of our building was communities, and are those relationships. So we had high on the elementary, all the teachers came up. And that’s like the other half of what we do, or one big part of what we do is our public camps. But then the other stuff is our private programs. So we’ll develop private programs for anyone who wants to do leadership or team building training. The Navy’s coming up here to do their final night. And we have Malama Aina Foundation, they’re coming and then we do other stuff with private and public and charter school. So leisure then does their freshman overnighter with us and seeks this. We had the scouts up here doing their family camp as well. So there’s lots of opportunity. You know, if somebody’s interested in building a program, or doing an overnighter or something with that focusing on leadership and team building, we love to collaborate and make the program and be a resource. All right,

ATTILIO: 
so we got about 30 seconds left on the show. Thank you for being on the show. Can you give him the website one more time? What’s the website? Yeah,

JEANNETTE: 
it’s winnerscamp.org winnerscamp.org. Thanks,

ADRIENNE: 
Jeannette.

JEANNETTE: 
You’re welcome. And I’ll see you guys soon. Yes.

ADRIENNE: 
All right. Bye.

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