You name it, there’s a camp for it — scout camp, basketball camp, dance camp, ceramics camp, space camp. And now capitalism camp, also known as Camp Enterprise. Some 80 local high school juniors are gearing up for the San Diego Rotary Club’s annual spring trek to the wilderness for songs, skits and a crash course in entrepreneurism, American-style.

Now in its 27th year, Camp Enterprise is the San Diego Rotary Club’s longest-running service project. Club executive Chet Lathrop reports it gets 40 to 60 Rotarians involved hands on — more than any other activity. Lathrop chaired the first Camp Enterprise in March 1976, when insurance mogul Bruce Moore was club president.

“The concern in those days was that business had a poor profile in schools,” Lathrop says. “Students were majoring in sociology, psychology, anything but business.” Moore imported the CE concept from the Columbus, Ohio, Rotary club, Lathrop says.

Some 45 11th-graders and their school counselors, accompanied by a passel of Rotarians, trekked to Camp Mataguay for seminars and discussions on topics such as free enterprise and private ownership. The students also tackled a case study, and made competitive presentations on the final afternoon at camp.

Concrete contractor Dave Sapper chairs this year’s camp, where the students will tackle the design of a viable student-oriented business to be included in The Paseo redevelopment project at San Diego State University. They must assume certain limitations, such as a $25,000-to-$50,000 start-up budget derived from family loans and an 800-square-foot space, Sapper says. The case was developed by Mike Hergert, Rotarian and dean of the SDSU College of Business Administration.

Past case studies have included the “Suzy’s Zoo” line of greeting cards, owned by Rotarian Suzanne Spafford, and Rubio’s, San Diego’s homegrown chain of fish taco temples.

Sapper, a six-year veteran of the program, says students chosen for CE are “not just the campus leaders,” but anyone who school counselors believe might benefit from exposure to entrepreneurial thinking. The magic, he says, is watching vastly diverse young people — “who might not ordinarily interact socially and are even a little standoffish at first” — shed their social inhibitions and plunge into the work at hand.

The social activities help. Among the Camp Enterprise traditions is a Friday night talent show, where students display their existing talent — piano, flute and guitar among them — or put together an ad hoc skit or lip synch.

Also on hand to break the ice between the high schoolers and their Rotary mentors is a gang of SDSU students affiliated with the Rotary Club, the Rotaractors. Ali Brown is a Rotaractor vice president and liaison between the campus club and the Rotary Club itself.

The Rotaractors, she says, link the teens to their elders, keep up the kids’ morale when deadlines loom and serve as translators — literally.

“How do you explain gross national product to an 11th-grader?” Brown asks. “We can help the Rotarians put an idea like that into language the kids can understand.”

Twelve Rotaractors will be on hand at this year’s Camp Enterprise on April 11 to 13. Brown agrees that the two and a half-day CE experience is “like none other.”

“The kids learn about team building, diversity and working with other people. Many high school students are never asked to think critically, especially about a real life issue. They build a lot of confidence in themselves as their groups come together. And think about the confidence it takes to go to Julian with 100 other people you don’t know.”

Not a lot has changed as CE approaches its 27th anniversary. Camp Cedar Glen in Julian hosts CE nowadays, and the number of kids has risen to 80. And school counselors no longer attend — “They didn’t seem to want to apply themselves,” Lathrop remembers — but the basic structure of CE remains intact.

Camp Enterprise begins with the Rotary Club’s customary Thursday luncheon, where the CE-bound students are club guests and hear a speaker chosen for the ability to inspire. Then it’s off to Julian, where this year the students will hear such speakers as former banker Fred Baranowski on finance, attorney Bill Beamer on business ethics, Cloud 9 Shuttle’s John Hawkins on people management and hotel maven Nancy Scott on presentation skills.

The speeches, Sapper promises, are interspersed with food and social breaks. The meat of Camp Enterprise is the case study, which the students tackle in groups of eight to 10, with a Rotarian as leader and a Rotaractor for moral support. Competitive presentations are made Saturday afternoon before piling onto the bus for home.

Don Teemsma Jr. is a 1978 CE alumnus who will return as a leader this year. Now the president of his family’s Ideal Plumbing and Heating, he recalls his own CE experience as an eye-opener.

“Our speaker on Thursday was a guy who had been third-degree burned top to bottom in an airplane accident,” Teemsma says. “But even with his physical adversity, it didn’t matter. He still had opportunities and he took them.”

When you’re a teen-ager, appearance and popularity are everything and it’s hard to imagine being successful without them. But you can. His message: You can overcome adversity.

Sapper’s goals for the weekend are a little more modest. “I just want to get the kids back home on Saturday in the same condition they arrived on Thursday.”