HomeFront’s Trenton summer camp needs your help

A HomeFront summer camp outreach addresses real issues regarding a Trenton revitalization: education and poverty.

The organization’s Camp Mercer initiative which seeks donations to send homeless children to summer camp, underscores the correlation between failed education efforts and generational poverty.

HomeFront notes an estimated “47% of [Trenton] teens will not graduate high school and are in danger of repeating their parents’ cycle of poverty.”

Poverty resembles quicksand, difficult to escape without assistance from others, people who care about such debilitating conditions.

• HomeFront summer camp activities and curriculum are specially designed to meet the developmental needs of children in homelessness and poverty, backed by over 25 years of experience dealing with these very issues.

• A key component of HomeFront Summer Camp is tutoring in math and language arts, for each child, every single day. Kids begin school confident and up to speed.

• Studies show that a confident student is much more likely to stay in school, the biggest step in breaking the cycle of poverty.

• Over 150 children attend HomeFront’s summer camp each year. Every one of them is there because a generous donor made it possible.

Sign-up today to sponsor a child — or multiple children

— by calling 609-989-9417 x 137 or by sending an email to homefront@homefrontnj.org. You will be given the age, gender, clothing and shoe size(s) of the child(ren) you are supporting, along with a backpack and the school supplies needed.

Perhaps a donor can send a child to camp this summer or maybe interested parties can make plans to assist a child next year.

If not HomeFront then surely some other local nonprofit can use your financial support or donation of time as a volunteer.

L.A. Parker is a Trentonian columnist.