By Sylvia van Meerten | Executive Director
Over my 8 years at Dragonfly Forest, I've seen such a beautiful cycle of giving and receiving support in our camp community. Here is a recent example that really touched my heart:
Many of our campers grow up to be counselors, so we have a really awesome and diverse bunch of peope on our staff (some have autism, some have sickle cell or asthma etc). As you might imagine, this leads to some unlikely friendships that last throughout the years. It's really fun to watch people use their communication skills to forge these relationships and then enjoy the fruits of their labors in the form of expanded networks, more jokes, and very memorable experiences.
Anyway, a couple of former campers/current counselors decided they wanted to throw a holiday party reunion for our hemotology campers. The whole idea was to reconnect with our campers from this session, and make sure everyone understood our new registration model. Now, kids with sickle cell have trouble with the cold weather, so they decided to throw the party at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (one of our community partners), who donated the space. These industrious counselors got a lot of food donated from around town, decorated the whole place and, because it's camp, got a DJ so we could dance.
Some of our parents from our 22Q session found out about the party and asked if they could come too. We obviously said yes, and then a bunch more counselors got involved. The whole party turned into a mini-fundraiser with donated raffle prizes and dancing and a very ecclectic bunch of people getting kinda wild in a hospital conference room on freezing cold day in December, all because our counselors are the best people on earth!
Dear supporters, I give you this hilarious video from the party! The guy on the mike is a former counselor who volunteers to come to all our stuff, the DJ is a current counselor, and our Medical Directors are dancing in the background. ENJOY.
P.S In other good news, our #25 days of giving campaign was sucessful, and we made our annual appeal goals and our grant writing goals for this quarter!
The attached photo is from the end of talent show during the summer. We all cry everytime!
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