The Chewonki Foundation Board of Trustees announced Monday that the 93-year-old camp for boys will officially launch a unique counterpart in the summer of 2008.

Camp Chewonki for Girls will officially open its doors at Fourth Debsconeag Lake Wilderness Camps on June 24 and will offer a suite of Maine wilderness based programs for girls ages 11-17, with an introductory program on Chewonki Neck for girls ages 8-10. The program has already begun enrolling for next summer.

"The momentous decision was made after a nine-year search for a permanent site for Chewonki Girls programs," said Chewonki President Don Hudson. "The staff at Chewonki is ecstatic, and I know that when I look back on my time here, I will think about the establishment of a wilderness camp for girls as one of our greatest and most inspiring accomplishments."

Fourth Debsconeag Wilderness Lake Camp is nestled in a wilderness area of vast proportions, surrounded by 90,000 acres of conservation lands owned by the state of Maine and The Nature Conservancy, just 12 miles south of the West Branch of the Penobscot River and Chewonki's Big Eddy Campground. Another 50,000 acres just south of the site, in the 100-Mile Wilderness, is owned and managed by The Appalachian Mountain Club. More than 500,000 acres of Baxter State Park and adjoining conservation lands lie to the north.

"This site on Fourth Debsconeag Lake is about as pristine and idyllic as one might imagine for a girl's camp," said Wilderness Programs Director Greg Shute who has run Chewonki's wilderness trips since 1991. Shute, a Registered Maine Guide who serves on the board of the Maine Youth Camping Association, chairperson of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Trip Leader Program and founding member and co-president of the Maine Wilderness Guides Organization, has helped Hudson and a team of Chewonki staffers lead the nonprofit's decade-long effort to locate the appropriate site for a girls camp.

In January 2007, Chewonki hired Genell Vashro, its first director of girls programs, with funding assistance from The Quimby Family Foundation. "Genell has added focus and exhilaration to our search, and more importantly, she has developed a new brand of program for girls that is entirely unique from other girls camps in Maine and also from what we offer Chewonki boys," said Hudson. Chewonki has served girls over the past several years through its co-ed wilderness expeditions and school programs, but the nonprofit has never operated a summer camp exclusively for girls.

Camp Chewonki for Girls will set itself apart from other girl's camps in Maine first and foremost because of its wilderness setting and associated wilderness programming. The model for Chewonki's girls camp -- comparable to camps in northern Minnesota and Ontario - is based around the central theme of camping and traveling through wilderness in small groups. In this way, girls and young women experience many rich dimensions of wilderness living while gaining self-confidence, cultivating relationships with their peers and leaders, learning a wide variety of skills, and deepening their knowledge of wild places. The length of journey will increase each year as participants become more competent, discovering the joys, challenges, and opportunities for reflection that lie within the woods and waters of Maine and beyond.

"The seed of this exciting new development was planted years ago at Chewonki and was accelerated in the last several years with the overwhelming success of the Canoe Expedition for Maine Girls," said Vashro.

"Because of this program's success, Çhewonki's camp for girls will revolve around the central themes of wilderness travel and building girls' confidence, appreciation and lifelong skills to journey through wilderness."

In an effort to encourage the continued diversity of it participants, Vashro noted that Chewonki has taken the bold move of creating a General Girls Program Endowment and a Maine Girls Endowment, with the goal of earmarking 10 scholarships per year specifically for Maine girls. "I could not be more pleased by this exciting outcome," said Vashro. Another unique feature of Fourth Debscongeag Wilderness Camps will be the opening of its doors to the public during the fall and spring seasons for adults and families. To learn more about Camp Chewonki For Girls, go to www. chewonki.org/ .