I see the opportunity to work with Global Camps Africa as a privilege and an opportunity.

The growing acceptance of using camp as a vehicle to change important behaviors in individuals is an awesome responsibility and, a word not used too often by people working in the HIV/AIDS field, a joy! I love waking up, getting to work, meeting with people interested in changing the way the world looks at its “unsolvable problems,” and then, by day’s end, always feeling as though I have moved another incremental distance toward the goal of no HIV/AIDS among children.

We have been honored by awards from the American Camp Association, the Maine Youth Camping Association, the Association of Independent Camps, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the Board of Supervisors of Fairfax County. We have been written about in the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Johannesburg Star, Kennebec Journal, Reston Times, Reston Connection, Reston Observer, Camping magazine, and the Canadian Camping magazine. BBC has done a television and radio report on our camp program.

Children who have been to camp since January 2004 have reported that their lives have been changed by the camp experience. Now, I heard that frequently when I owned and directed a U.S. camp. Somehow it has more significance coming from young people who arrived at camp with little or no vision for their life as an adult; that many fully expected that they would not reach adulthood due to the onset of HIV/AIDS; that they had no similar experience to camp; and that this was their only organized recreational outlet.

It is amazing to me that the values of camp transcend distance, culture, and past experience. After more than a hundred years of camp in the U.S., one more camp hardly makes a difference on the landscape. Unless the camp is a Hole in the Wall Gang or Seeds of Peace, or something else that changes the basic tenor of the camp experience, most young people’s needs can be met through one form or other of existing camps.

In Africa, there are few other camps or programs that provide a similar experiential learning avenue. What a marvelous opportunity to bring an institution that has provided so much to me and those I care about to another place where it can be marshaled to also provide important health benefits.

As an opening blog, I just want to thank you for having supported what has become an important social and health project. It’s probably too soon to say that it has really caught on and will continue without constant support. After all, we have one camp in South Africa and another about to begin. There are other major areas in South Africa that should be served, and 52 other countries in Africa, and then the rest of the developing world that is either unserved or underserved by camps.

Let’s not stop until we have reached all of them! Thanks for providing the partnership that invests in the lives of children in need.