EXCLUSIVE — The role of second lady is one steeped in tradition, but second lady Usha Vance is hoping to start a new one.
Vance, 39, a trial lawyer and Supreme Court justice clerk before her husband, JD Vance, became vice president in January, welcomed more than 200 children to the second couple’s residence, Number One Observatory Circle, on Saturday for her first Camp VPR, sharing exclusive photos of the event with the Washington Examiner. The vice president co-hosted the camp along with her.
“The vice president and I truly enjoyed sharing our home with so many families at Camp VPR,” Usha Vance, who has three young children with the vice president, told the Washington Examiner. “We plan to make this an annual tradition and to keep encouraging kids to get outdoors, learn something new, and have fun while doing it.”
Every child who attended the inaugural Camp VPR, an abbreviation for “Vice President’s Residence,” departed with a book, according to the second lady.
The children also had the opportunity to take part in arts and craft activities, including bracelet making, rock painting, tie-dying, and face painting, with moon bounces, water slides, and National Park Service tents in the second couple’s backyard while the U.S. Navy Band Cruisers played on their front lawn.
“It was wonderful to see their excitement when choosing a book,” Usha Vance said. “I hope this inspires them to pick up more books this summer and to complete the Second Lady’s Summer Reading Challenge. I encourage all kids across the country to join in and can’t wait to see what they have to say about the books they read this summer.”
Camp VPR comes after Usha Vance launched her Summer Reading Challenge this week, a program through which children aged from kindergarten to eighth grade are invited to read 12 books of their choice before Sept. 9 for a certificate and a prize. One child will also win a trip to the White House.
“I’ve been seeing the data about how there’s been a lot of reading loss, literacy rates are declining, and children are really just not reading as much as they used to,” Usha Vance told Fox News this week. “So, I’ve been really motivated to try to do something about that. And so the Summer Reading Challenge is my first attempt to try to make a little bit of a difference in this area.”
The second lady has acknowledged that the Summer Reading Challenge and Camp VPR are not “the end all, be all” to address decreasing childhood literacy rates.
For example, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, found in January that reading levels for fourth- and eighth-grade students last year dropped by 2 points. One-third of eighth-grade students scored below “basic” in reading, the most in the assessment’s history, and 40% of fourth-graders are reading at the same level, the most in two decades.
“My goal is to try to come up with small ways in which I can use my platform to counteract some of those issues,” Usha Vance added this week. “We’re going to see how they work. If they’re successful, then we’ll try to build on them and do it again next year, maybe in even a bigger form.”
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In addition to being the first second lady to live at the vice president’s residence with young children, Usha Vance, a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, is the first Indian American second lady.
Her role during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump‘s administration included leading a presidential delegation to the 2025 Special Olympic Winter Games in Italy and a diplomatic mission to Greenland for the Avannaata Qimussersu, the country’s national dogsled race, before her husband upended her plans. They visited the American Pitufik military base instead.
She, too, has accompanied her husband on multiple domestic and foreign trips, such as to India and to the Vatican.