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How Girl Camper Magazine Started a Movement of Community, Encouragement, and Legacy for Women

How Girl Camper Magazine Started a Movement of Community, Encouragement, and Legacy for Women

When you read the bottom portion of an engrossing magazine and flip the page to the next, what’s the feeling you get? 

The feeling of satisfaction and emotional connection to your book is something we all crave and occasionally miss. We forget how tremendous it is to close a chapter and head into a new one with fresh perspectives. It’s an experience you’ll never get in digital form.

A luminary who recognizes the importance of print media is Janine Pettit. Pettit is the creator of Girl Camper Magazine, which restores the same feeling of satisfaction and invokes a paradigm shift. 

We talked to Pettit to understand how the Girl Camper Magazine tells a new story of girl camping- a previously unexplored niche. Let’s get into how the magazine built a community of over 210,000 women in the Facebook group.

Watch the full interview with Janine. Additional clips from the interview can be found at the bottom of this article!

Who are Girl Campers?


Girl Campers is a group of like-minded friends who aim to experience a redesigned camping experience focusing on a new women-only niche. Girl Campers organize camping events across America for women looking to get out of their comfort zone and experience camping as a hobby or team-building activity.

Girl camper’s slogan is “No Wrong Way To Camp Like A Girl.” The phrase has enabled Janine Pettit create a camping experience that enjoins hammock hangers, RVers, cabin renters, tent totters, and all campers around the campfire. 

Some cool stuff girl campers engage in are:

  • Bonfire storytelling
  • RV repairs
  • DIY crafts
  • Cinema nights
  • Kayaking
  • Snowboarding
  • Spelunking

Each chapter sees an influx of women who want to explore the outdoors without family and workplace restrictions. The experience is new every time and provides the much-needed rejuvenation. 

But how Janine Pettit and her friends managed to build a movement of community, encouragement, and legacy for women defies the otherwise conventional standards.

Girl Camper Magazine Background


Janine is an avid lover of magazines, particularly Cottage Style magazines. Speaking to us, she shared her love for magazines and attested to having a truckload of magazines stacked in her office. 

In the many interactions with magazines, she encountered no camping magazines. Pettit made a bold move to create the Girl Camper Magazine to fill the blank in camping magazines. “I created the magazine I wanted to buy,” Janine Pettit stated in our interview.

The challenge was translating her ideas into a tangible magazine. Pettit approached Alana Hogg, who had built her own company and had success at top lifestyle magazines. To Janine’s surprise, Alana took it personally to develop the magazine. She worked on the first three issues and nailed them every time.

This particular issue is a tribute to Allan Hogg- the founding art director without whose efforts the magazine wouldn’t be what it is today.

Pettit’s collaborative efforts with Seaways Printing enabled her to turn her vision into a reality. Seaways combined Janine’s efforts in women empowerment through camping, added love and care, and produced a magazine that, in its right, changes your perspective on matters of women-only camping.

Bringing Girl Campers Together


Girl Camper Magazine brings together success stories of Shari Sullivan, Michelle Almodovar, Sharon Cormican, and other women who have created their hobbies in camping and positively influenced other women to try camping which is largely male-dominated.

The magazine unites local girl campers into a national movement. From New Jersey, Delaware to just about any state in America, you can find your local chapter and camp in your local neck of the woods. 

Through the magazine, Janine has built in what she calls the “encouragement rather than empowerment” community. As more girls read the magazine, they realize life outside the home. They can explore the outdoors and have as much fun as men. Women for a long time haven’t enjoyed the same freedom as men since they have to shelve their camping cravings to tend to family and work duties. The magazine’s success stories tell of women who balance camping and have flourished in work and family too.

Girl Camper Magazine is building a community of encouragement for many women. After reading the magazine, more women forming their local chapters is a win in extensive measures. “Win is building community, and we need more of that,” Janine Pettit. 

Outlook


Thanks to Seaway’s state-of-the-art equipment and human-centric approach, the magazine represents the first step for Girl Campers but a giant leap for women-kind. You can get the magazine and have the same swooning feeling every reader gets when they receive it. Girl Camper Magazine is all about going places and telling stories. Stories of community, encouragement, and legacy for women.

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