MARKING A MILESTONE
Variety Club celebrates 85th year of serving kids with special needs
WORCESTER » Two groups dedicated to helping children in Montgomery County recently came together to help one of the organizations celebrate a milestone event.
Variety Club Camp & Development Center welcomed longtime friends Hogs & Honeys to its 85th birthday celebration recently.
It was the first of several celebrations planned throughout the year, noted CEO Dominique Bernardo.
“We originally planned this celebration for Aug. 5, 8-5, a play on our 85th birthday. And we wanted to call it a birthday instead of an anniversary because it’s more whimsical and childlike, and we serve children.”
Unfortunately, Mother Nature had left residual effects from the recent tropical storm, with flooding and tree damage, so the Aug. 5 party was moved to Aug. 13.
“We wanted to mark the birthday in some way with the limited summer programming we have, in a safe way, keeping social distance,” Bernardo said.
Part of the celebration included a gift of an adaptive tricycle to a child with special needs from King of Prussia.
“We identified her through King of Prussia, and Hogs & Honeys supported
the trike giveaway. We primarily do direct services but when we have resources from donors we do that a few times a year. So had little Presley receive an adaptive trike, compliments of the Hogs & Honeys Foundation Then we had our vocational kids, and these are kids that are ages 16 to 21 that are in school but are in our summer vocational program, bake cupcakes in our industrial kitchen. What they do is get experience in different parts of campus and one of those areas is our industrial kitchen. So we had them bake and decorate these birthday cupcakes .”
As the young bakers presented their sweet specialties they sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ which was followed by a parade, Bernardo said.
“Everybody is having driveby birthdays during the pandemic, we had the folks from Hogs & Honeys Foundation, as well as the Montgomery County Centurians on their motorcycles, Worcester Volunteer Fire Co., Upper Gwynedd Police, Plymouth Ambulance, Hatfield Police, Lansdale Police, trucks from Allan Meyers, which is a great corporate partner of ours, and we did a drive-by parade driving around the campus three times, as the kids in our extended school year program came out of their cabins and stayed in their little socially distant groups.”
The produce that the vocational kids harvested from the garden and greenhouse was sold at a farm stand on the property this summer, along with baked goods and hand-crafted items made in the workshop.
“So these kids rotated through all these stations and got this vocational experience,” Bernardo explained. “It’s one of my favorite programs because when people come to visit in normal times you can see the kids in the garden helping harvest the kale, you can see them in the kitchen turning the zucchini into zucchini bread and then they’re out there at the farm stand which we did twice a week this summer, selling these things that they’re proud to have made.”
The program will soon spin off a year-round farmto-table model, with older young adults working with community business partners, mixing on- campus education with business experience in the community.
“It’s a really cool way of us utilizing our 77 acres and giving kids a unique experience from all the different functional areas on campus while also getting real life experience in the community, with the goal of eventually, if they’re able to, to move into independent employment,” Bernardo said.