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With summer just a few months away, kids' thoughts naturally turn to escape from the daily grind to frolicking with their peers in rustic settings.

But for the nonprofit Foundation for Jewish Camp, spending time away from home involves more than just the typical games, arts and crafts, and sharing stories around a campfire.

For the FJC, the Jewish camp experience should lead, not only to forging friendships with fellow campers, but, more importantly, to inspire campers to "a lifetime commitment to the Jewish people," its Web site says.

To that end, the FJC convened its biennial conference -- "Leaders Assembly 2010: Keys to the Cabin: Unlocking a Changing World" -- March 14-15 at the Westin Hotel on the Jersey City waterfront.

An estimated 500 guests registered for the weekend event of speakers, panels, and discussions on topics ranging from strategies for growing camp enrollment to fundraising to specialty camps to recruiting Russian-speaking young Jews.

FJC says that through the U.S. and Canada, it has built relationships with 150 Jewish overnight camps, 70,000 campers, and 10,000 counselors with the help of annual budget of more than $22 million. Among other things, it provides "incentive grants" of $1,000 to first-time campers based on need.

Just how serious is the foundation about expanding its mission?

Well, take the keynote speaker it secured for its Leaders Assembly program: none other than digital marketing and personal branding guru Mitch Joel, author of "Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone is Connected, Connect Your Business to Everyone."

Joel flew in from Canada ,where he lives and runs Twist Image, a multi-million dollar digital marketing agency. Joel has been acclaimed as Canada's Most Influential Male in Media and as one of the world's top 100 online marketers.

Joel shared with his audience that he attended a Jewish camp in Canada back in 1984.

Camp is fun, but it's also a business, FJC's newly named CEO Jeremy J. Fingerman, of Englewood, reminded the conferees. Fingerman, the former president of the U.S. Division of Campbell Soup Company, is the founder and managing principal of Clairmont Ventures, a strategic consulting and investment advisory firm. The holder of an MBA from Harvard Business School, Fingerman is also the product of eight summers at a Jewish-sponsored camp.

Fingerman, who has already visited 31 camps associated with FJC since he began his new duties six weeks ago, told the camp directors, counselors, and advocates assembled in Jersey City that despite the national recession, they're not losing any ground.

"[Camp] enrollment in 2009 was flat," Fingerman said. And, he said, "I believe we're going to hold our own going into 2010."

That forecast, Fingerman said, is based partly on research "that shows a significant number of our camper parents are alumni themselves," and that, he said, is a positive indication of how the camps have impacted the lives of those participating.

However, because "half our parents have never been to (Jewish) camp," that still leaves lots of outreach work ahead for the FJC, he said.

Skip Vichness, chairman of the FJC board of directors, offered some more good news to the guests.

"Eight new camps have opened in the last two years," Vichness said, including one special needs camp. "Never has the future been brighter."

Vichness ticked off a list of a half-dozen Jewish camps that recently marked anniversaries of 40, 50, 60, and even 100 years of operation. "For the past four years, I've traveled the North American continent to meet with many of you -- counselors, directors," Vichness said. "All of you are engaged in holy work... you're engaged in a battle for the survival of Jewry."

During the past 11 years, Vichness said, the number of Jewish overnight campers has grown from 43,000 to 70,000, and in the past four years, sponsors have committed $100 million to the camp campaign.

Nevertheless, Vichness said, "We need to lower the barrier to entry to Jewish camping; the cost of camping is still unaffordable for many Jewish families."

In 2009, one of every eight Jewish campers received funding from the FJC and its partners, Vichness said.

Despite daunting obstacles, such as what Vichness described as "overwhelming" construction costs for new camping facilities, FJC advocates like board of directors member Jules "Julie" Eisen are upbeat about the future.

Eisen, who lived in Hoboken -- where his dad was a furniture manufacturer -- and in North Bergen before his family moved to Upper Saddle River, is a firm believer that a Jewish camp experience "has a lifelong positive impact" because "in spending 24/7 with fellow Jews, you gain an understanding of how a Jewish community works, how it forms its values, its leadership."

Having invested more than five years on the FJC board, Eisen said his "commitment to the Jewish ideal nourishes me on a whole other level."

One conference attendee, Josefa Michaelson, of Canada, said that when she was 10, her Zionist parents "forced me" to attend Camp Shalom, about two hours north of Toronto, where her older brother had gone a year before.

To her surprise, Michaelson said she found the experience to be fun. "There was lots of singing and dancing, which I liked, and that helped me," she said.

Michaelson became active in Canadian Young Judaea, the largest Zionist youth movement in Canada, and for the past six years, she's been director of Biluim Israel, the final phase of CYJ's leadership training program.

Each summer, Biluim Israel recruits up to 135 17-year-olds, boy and girls, from Canada and the U.S. for a four-week summer camp session in Israel, with an option for a side trip to Poland to visit former concentration camp sites.

Ninety percent of Biluim campers are descendants of Polish camp survivors or those who escaped the camps, according to Michaelson. Also attending the conference was Adam Schulman, director of Camp Shalom, the pluralist Zionist camp that Michaelson had attended. "We offer sports, arts and crafts, dramatics, photography, gymnastics, dance, and a Zionist educational component," he said.

The camp, which has been running for 62 years, "already has some third-generation campers," Shulman said. Among the camp's more famous alumni are Canadian Sen. Jerry Grafstein and Dov Josef, who served in three Israeli Knessets.

Other participants included: Jeff Salam, executive director of the Sephardic Adventure Camp in Seattle, which offers a three-week camp, complete with Sefardic traditions, for boys and girls; and Jordanna Flores, director of Camp Alonim in Los Angeles, which has been serving up Jewish camping for 57 years.

Also on hand was Julia Riseman, a mentor with the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthrophy in Springfield, Mass. Riseman called herself a "poster child for someone not connected to Judiasm," as the daughter of a Jewish father who intermarried and who "didn't connect to Jewish life."

But now, as a consultant to Jewish nonprofit organizations, Riseman said she "has the opportunity to support Jewish kids to live joyously Jewishly."

Almost as excited as a young camper was Jonah Canner, a graduate of Camp Shomria, part of Hashomer Hotzair, in Liberty, N.Y., who trains bunk counselors as a faculty member of the Jewish Camp Cornerstone Program and, for the past four years, has run the Fertile Grounds Project in New York City, a two-week nonprofit camp in New York's Catskills.

Rabbi Jerome Abrams, of New York -- a retired camp director, formerly associated with Camp Ramah, who has spent time in Israel, Europe and South America -- said he came to the conference because, "I still want to be inspired about what Jewish camps can accomplish."