Camps for Kids Affected by Parental Incarceration
Camp Elevate is Breakaway’s flagship ministry serving children affected by parental incarceration in East Tennessee, North Georgia, and Western North Carolina. Nearly 2 million children in the U.S. currently have a parent in prison. Children of incarcerated parents face challenges of psychological stress (stigma and shame), academic difficulties, and a higher risk of being involved in the criminal justice system. Prisoners’ children are six times more likely than other children to be incarcerated at some point in their lives.
Breakaway summer/winter camps are game changers in many ways…
- Providing safe places of refuge to escape the everyday stresses of life
- Offering gospel-centered ministries to help kids encounter Christ and grow in their faith
- Cultivating community and mentoring for children that sticks with them long after camp
- Shaping resilience and confidence to face life’s trials with a new perspective
- Fostering pathways for discipleship growth, leadership development, and better futures
Camp Elevate Expanding to South Korea
We are also very excited to announce a new partnership development with our Camp Elevate program in South Korea. When we started Camp Elevate almost two decades ago in East Tennessee, we never imagined it would go all the way to Asia. Ephesians 3:20 tells us that our God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us,” and this is what’s happening in 2026!
Next year, Breakaway Asia is launching a new summer camp, patterned after our Tennessee camp, which will serve children in Korea impacted by parental and familial incarceration. It will feature gospel-centered, trauma-informed, and resilience-building approaches alongside of English learning components.
The partnership will also afford opportunities for young people who have grown up in our Tennessee camp to go and serve on mission in Korea—Korean children hearing the Gospel from American young people who have walked a mile in their shoes and have since overcome the stigma of parental incarceration. That’s what we call a marriage made in heaven, or “on earth as it is in heaven.”
This doesn’t happen without partners like you. Because of you boldly standing in the gap with us, praying and giving, kids from hard places are experiencing life-change. Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel!