Camp Awakening brings Paralympians to mentor campers for its first-ever ParaSport Session,
For more than three decades, Camp Awakening has been inspiring children with physical disabilities to use sports as a way to increase independence and build new skills.
This summer, with a new crop of campers filing in, the objective is the same, but with one twist: The camp is hoping to recruit Paralympians to act as instructors and mentors to the kids for a new ParaSport Session in August.
“We wanted to create a program that gets the campers more involved with sports ... not only at camp but throughout the rest of the year,” said camp assistant director Kendra Heney.
As the campers — ages 9 to 18 — got ready for a big Canada Day weekend, Heney and interim director Manpal Mangat noted some statistics regarding kids with disabilities.
About 40 per cent of their campers “do not do any physical activities outside of camp,” Heney said.
With camp running to the end of August, that could mean the campers are active two months of the year; the other10 months, when they are at home, they could be idle for longer spells during the day, either with no chances to play sports, or even no idea what opportunities are available.
Enter the new ParaSport program at the camp. The plan is to introduce the campers to a different parasport each day.
The kids will be instructed by a coach with a wide background in parasports, and while the camp is still trying to recruit Paralympians, the kids will get a wide range of sports instruction and chances to participate.
“Every day, (campers) will go over a new sport with their in- structor,” Heney said, adding that a former camper will be providing the instruction for the boys.
“There’s going to be a lot of parasports for them ... basketball, tennis, volleyball, sledge hockey,” she said.
“In the morning, the coaches will go over the sports, show them how to play, give them drills and other things. In the afternoon, the camp will turn to the traditional, fun things, like canoeing and horseback riding. But in the evening, they’ll go back and play the sport they learned about in the morning.”
The program is divided into a boys camp and a girls camp — seven kids in each — with the boys staged out of Kilcoo Camp in Minden and the girls out of Camp Oconto, near Kingston. “Our campers can make friends with other children with disabilities in the Camp Awakening cabin at those camps, as well as with able-bodied campers at the host camps,” Heney said.
Camp Awakening, now in its 36th year, takes in children with a wide range of disabilities.
The Toronto Star Fresh Air Fund provides funding help for the campers, many of whom come from low-income households.
“A lot of campers would not be able to come to camp without the Star’s Fresh Air Fund,” Mangat said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for these kids and their families.”