HPA and GSMS Grade Eight LA
A Happy Place: An Exemplar
Imagine you are a child with a terminal illness. You’re constantly running back and forth to the hospital, so you don’t have time for a social life. Because your parents are stressed from trying to keep you healthy and paying expensive medical bills, they often fight. Since your family’s life is centered around taking care of you, your siblings’ needs can fall to the wayside. You need a place where you can hang out with kids your own age without them being uncomfortable or treating you differently because of your illness. You need a place where all your medical needs are catered to, and you can still have fun. You need a place where your family can be a family again. Camp Sunshine is that place.
Camp Sunshine is located in Saco, Maine, just down the road from Point Sebago Lake, a resort owned by founders Anna and Larry Gould. They were inspired to start Camp Sunshine after they saw a TV program about children with cancer. They traveled to Boston to ask doctors to recommend patients for a program they plan to host at their retreat. It was the doctors who first suggested that the whole family stay, not just the sick child. The Goulds immediately agreed: they had children of their own and knew how important family life is.
In 1984, the first families arrived at Camp Sunshine for four sessions of one week each, completely free of charge. By 2001, the Goulds had donated several million dollars and enough land to build a spacious campus for Camp Sunshine. Now, the number week long session has expanded to twenty-five, the camp runs all year, and it is renowned as one of the few programs for sick kids that works with the whole families.
The camp is housed in a large, shingled, two-story complex, complete with archery, arts and crafts rooms for both adults and kids, two separate buildings with twenty-one families suites in each, an outdoor pool that allows kids who are sensitive to sunlight and the bacteria in the water to swim, a huge cafeteria, a library, a volleyball court that turns into an ice rink in the winter, a playground, computer lab, basketball court, and climbing wall. They even have an eighteen hole mini-golf course.
The architects who designed Camp Sunshine made sure it feels friendly and warm – in other words, unlike a hospital. They created curved walls, multiple porches, and a lot of friendly decorations and paintings. One volunteer, a local artist and cancer survivor, painted bright murals of the children and volunteers on the walls.
One reason Camp Sunshine can host over eight hundred families a year free of charge is its volunteers. There are only thirteen paid employees. Each week-long session requires eighty volunteers. Some live locally, but most come from all over the country. Their ages range from sixteen to seventy. A few are bilingual and translate for families from the sixteen other countries Camp Sunshine has helped. When I asked Matt Hodial, the executive director for the last nine years, what draws so many people to volunteer at Camp Sunshine, he answered, “The ability to work first hand with kids and the special opportunity to make a difference.”
Even the medical staff are volunteers. Since each of the week-long sessions is centered around particular disease, the on-site doctor is an expert in that illness. The physicians take care of the medical needs of the kids – whether it’s a scratched knee or a more serious issue connected with their illness. The founders kept this in mind when they built Camp Sunshine close to Maine Medical Center.
Almost all the money donated to Camp Sunshine goes directly to the sick kids and their families. Their budget this year is 2.2 million dollars, most of which will go to sponsoring families. CTL’s grant could be used to buy books for their library, purchase new toys, help sponsor a family, or acquire safer medical equipment or a new TV for their teen room.
“People often ask me if this is a sad place,” Hodial comments, and it’s easy to see how one could think that. Everyday these families face horrors we can’t imagine, from not being able to have a normal childhood to not knowing how much time is left. But the truth is, Camp Sunshine isn’t about depression, disease, or death. It’s about making new friends, supporting your family, fun, kids, laughter, relaxation, and love.