In 1947, a handful of young San Francisco businessmen got together to help disadvantaged children in the Bay Area. That group, which became known as The Guardsmen, noted that the existing civic and welfare agencies provided children with the basic necessities -- food, clothing, shelter, and education -- however these children had little or no opportunity to experience life outside the often harsh inner-city.

Early Guardsmen members recognized that children benefited from a personal, adult-child relationship, particularly if it was cultivated in a setting conducive to developing friendships. Appropriately, the group established a Campership Program, whose goal was to send every deserving child in the Bay Area to summer camp. With a fundamental goal of giving a younster the chance to feel -- perhaps for the first time -- the simple joy of what it is to be a child, the Campership Program became an instant success.

In recent years, we have also begun to assist private school programs that educate the same type of children that attend our summer camps. The Youth Education Scholarship Program provides significant support to selected institutions where we can make a substantial impact on the quality of the programs or the number of children in the program.

Today, the Guardsmen continues with its mission to enrich the lives of the Bay Area's disadvantaged children. Our organization has served the community for more than 50 years in an environment that becomes increasingly difficult to raise money each year.