CAMPS FOR KIDS

Summer camp is an experience that goes beyond traditional notions of recreation. It serves as a transformative space where children build lasting friendships, discover and hone new skills, and cultivate a sense of independence and community. This can be particularly important to children suffering the effects of poverty or facing physical, developmental or medical challenges that very few adults, much less their peers, can understand. Yet it is the most vulnerable children who often face the greatest obstacles in accessing summer camp. Camps For Kids works to help these children overcome these obstacles. Camps For Kids partners with area camps which focus on children with medical challenges (cancer, spina bifida, congenital heart defects, end-stage renal disease, and others), on the autism spectrum, with physical and developmental disabilities, foster care children, and those who come from low-income families. Many of these camps are offered at little to no cost to campers, and those which aren't use Camps For Kids' funding to provide scholarships for underprivileged children. The goal of the Camps For Kids' program is to help camps have the funds to assure that children will not be denied the summer camp experience because of low income or medical, physical or developmental disabilities. A central part of the Camps For Kids program is the offer of matching funds. This provides a unique opportunity for camps to effectively double their fundraising efforts, leveraging both their donor's gifts and staff/volunteer time. The objective is to raise matching funds to add to camp-dedicated donations Camps For Kids assists its camp partners to raise between April 1 and July 31 each year. The offer of matching funds has the added benefit of providing an incentive for donors, which our network camps report is vital to their individual fundraising efforts. The appeal of having their donations effectively doubled encourages many donors to donate. In 2023, Camps For Kids matched qualifying donations to the camps 100%. Camps For Kids is more than a fundraising organization. It also assists camps by promoting them to the community through social media and other forms of outreach and by receiving and processing donations for them. It also facilitates collaboration among the camps in its network to share resources, challenges and solutions. Since its founding in 1981, multiple generations of children from low-income families and/or those who have medical, physical, or developmental disabilities have reaped the benefits of summer camp at little to no cost to their families with the support of Camps For Kids. In 2023 alone, more than 4000 children and youth attended a summer camp in the Camps For Kids network - a significant increase over 2022. Camps reported that half of these children had a physical, medical or developmental disability and 62.5% required some financial assistance. No child was denied admission to a camp in our network because of inability to pay. We hear again and again from the campers and their families about the impact these camps have. Perhaps a former camper turned adult volunteer at Camp Quality, a specialty camp for children with cancer and rare-blood disorders, explains it best: "For one week every year at Camp Quality, I feel completely normal. Everyone around me is my family and I can be anyone I want and feel accepted. . . I wouldn't be who I am today {without camp}. These people have changed my life." Camp changes lives. Camps For Kids helps make that life-changing experience available to more Kansas City-area children.