End Homelessness in DC - One Family at a Time

                                           Sankofa Summer Camp Reaching Back To Move Forward

Our Hope and a Home children had many wonderful, enriching camp experiences this summer. Hope and a Home made it possible for 38 children to attend 8 weeks of camps that included 1-3 weeks of overnight camps for many of our older children. One of our students auditioned and was accepted into Debbie Allen’s dance camp in Los Angeles. We were able to provide funds to her family to help make this camp a reality.

 Following the 8 weeks of camp there is a gap at the end of the summer when most of the camps have ended and the school year has not yet begun. This year our staff organized a one week gap camp that we named Camp Sankofa. “Sankofa" is a West African word that teaches us that we must go back to our roots in order to move forward. That is, we should reach back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us, so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward.

We began the camp by asking for each child’s interpretation of what Sankofa means to them. For some it was what their parents have taught them. For others it was a sense of their heritage and history. Each child was given a journal that was theirs to keep at the end of their camp experience .On the first day they reflected on what was important to them from their roots. This daily journal then became a place for the children to record and reflect on what they had learned from the activities of the day.

The emphasis of the camp was on education and on making learning fun. We visited many places in Washington , D.C., the city where we live. We took public transportation whenever possible so that we weren’t dependent on cars and vans to take us on our excursions.

Some of the experiences that we planned were an African American Underground Railroad hike where we walked the trail through the woods that the slaves had traveled and   reenacted what it may have been like to survive in the forest and not get caught. We took an in depth look at zoo animals and rode the train to Baltimore to visit the Baltimore Aquarium where we saw many aspects of   sea life.

We were explorers and investigators and inventors. . We explored the Henley Meadows Wetlands through a scavenger hunt finding turtles, frogs, red winged black birds, and beaver dams. We discovered things living in the Wetlands that were not on our list. We explored our city by visiting places that some of the children had not visited before like the Arlington National Cemetery and the National Museum of American History.

We investigated why we wouldn’t want to build a city on the Wetlands, why animals behave in a certain manner, and why taking care of our environment is so important . We did hands- on experimenting with the inventions at the at the Spark Lab at the National Museum of American History and had the opportunity to create our own inventions.

Each day the children learned new things about themselves , their city , and their history. Our Hope and a Home children are enrolled in camps throughout the summer and participate in many extracurricular activities during the school year. We love to see the Hope and a Home children achieve their full potential as they move forward. Please support Hope and a Home as we bring enriching experiences to our children. They are worth the investment.