Bkay--great projects--and neat idea on having them create the blocks about their home schools!
In answer to a few questions/concerns--with the kids camp--they must have an adult with them--we do have a couple of exceptions with some kids that are actually already members of the guild and participate in our sewing activities. We've had grandpa's, older sibs, etc--just need to be able to sew. Sometimes the adult has the child sitting on their lap so the adult controls the foot control (speed)--although we also have a couple of kids that prefer to stand to sew and do a great job--gives them better control. With that group, the adult brings their own machine since they know their own machine (hopefully!) Our leader for this is a school principal so she's pretty darn good at organzing and keeping the kids engaged--and also the parents/adults!
With the event at the county fair, guild members bring a machine (and many of us have a cheaper travel machine for classes that we use)and the building we use is A/C and the one for all the textile classes so clean.
Both these use very simple items--rag pillow, drawstring bags, mug rugs, placemats, etc. Ours is a large guild and we seem to always have donated fabric so getting supplies is no problem.
We did mentor a high school FACS classes last year in making a large lap quilt--we probably won't do this again as it was lenghty (9 weeks), full day, and we had to cover almost every day--our volunteers found that hard to be consistent and frankly, some were a little afraid of high schoolers--not a problem for most of us that did actually volunteer and we had some fun with the kids(ok--there were a few boys I wanted to dropkick!). We decided instead to invite our local FACS teachers, Scout leaders, 4H leaders, etc to our kids camp to see how we organize sewing with kids and to get ideas for their groups. We've only had mediocre success with that cause it's in the summer and most of those folks are wanting a break!
And I agree with Bkay--think if you ask people for fabrics and used older machines to use, you will find lots of enthusiasm.
I'd like some suggestions from others on how to get young women (men??) involved in sewing and quilting--I'm talking 20-30 year olds. Many have not learned to sew in school and may not have family members that sew. My guild tries to make our sew days on Sat. to help those that work outside the home (or have young kids and need someone else to watch). I see lots of blogs with young women quilters--but how to get new sewers? We offer 7weeks of beginner classes (end up with a sampler that teaches everything except Y seams and PP--we do get a few via that but they all seem so busy and pulled in 3 different directions--how to other guilds counter that?