“Give me the boy, you have been bingeing for the past week” said Grandma to his mom “the boy should not have to live like this”.
After some family intervention, he was allowed to live with Grandma and she registered him for camp. He had a truly entertaining, educational, fun and loving camp experience.
Each day, he would come out of his shell a little more as he became more comfortable with his new friends at camp. Every morning, Grandma would drop him off and update me about his emotional state and her progress in navigating the legal system to gain custody. One day, both grandmas dropped him off and told me how grateful they are for the camp as he talks about camp all the time. He savored every minute of his time at camp, he loved the bowling and movie day but his favorite seemed to be the twice weekly trip to the pool; he was always first in the water and for the ice cream cones. He got very excited as his team competed in the field day games ( he almost won the water balloon toss with his partner). On the Captree fishing trip, he caught a few fish and made sure I took photos of every fish to show Grandma, even a spider crab. At Adventureland, with some cash in hand from Naycha, he carefully scanned the menu before making his selection; we made sure that all kids had some cash to buy food (full disclosure: we used some of the ice cream funds for this, hope you wouldn’t mind). He was a very happy camper. He was very attentive during yoga and the instructor always ended the session with asking the campers to describe how they felt in one word; most of the campers said words like calm, relaxed, loose, he said he felt “safe”!
At the Talent Show, wearing a new white shirt and white pants, he got on stage and sang Bruno Mars, Talking to the Moon. The audience went wild as everyone cheered loudly for him and both Grandmas took videos, and cried! Camp has been over for 3 weeks and Grandma continues to provide me with updates; he is doing well.
This is how we measure our success, one child at a time; we would not have been able to improve this child’s life, even for a short period, without your support. For this, I thank all of you.
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During the last two weeks of camp, the Outreach Center staff and volunteers distributed over 220 backpacks. Rather than have all families come on one day, families picked up backpacks on a schedule; spreading out the distribution works much better. Another best practice resulting from COVID. To date we have distributed over 300 backpacks, and our final number should be over 330 backpacks.
The Outreach Center food and clothing pantry are very busy, inflation is quite real for so many.
Thanksgiving Food Distribution is next!
All good, thank you.
Joe
