City Hope. Summer Camp

Chair: President Basil

Anthem: Peter Masson

Grace: Kevin Moore

 

Attendance: 17

(including 4 guests: Jackie Davies, Toronto R.C., Sue Palmer guest of Gordon Brown, David Seemungal’s daughter, Dayne,  July Cooke from Dallas TX, friend and boss of Maddy.

 

Announcements:

 

Marbelous Draw was won, and lost, by Maddy when her guest Joyce from Dallas Texas, pulled her ticket.

 

Sgt-at-Arms

            We were quizzed as to whether any one of us had been selected for a jury.  Seems that the Sherriff is sending notices of intent around.  All slackers were fined.

Happy bucks:

Program:

Basil introduced our very own Kevin Moore who is the Director of City Hope serving the Saint Jamestown community in the inner city.  Kevin is a Past President of our club, and involved in almost every facet of the club’s activities including being Director of the Camp Enterprise program.  His presentation today is a description of their Summer Day Camp program that is provided to 60 registered children (20 others are on the waiting list).  City Hope was started 10 years ago and the next year they started the Summer Camp program. That first year they had about a dozen kids for a two week program. Today the program runs for five days a week, over seven weeks in the summer and sixty children are registered (with another twenty on the waiting list.)  The church facility that they now use is made available by St. Andrews United Church and staffing constraints limit the number of kids who can be comfortably accommodated. They are now seeing campers from their earlier years returning to be councilors. That will help with their college tuition or expenses.

 

It costs City Hope about $25 per day for each camper.  St. Andrews is one of City Hope’s partners and about a third of the funds needed for the summer camp are provided through a Fundraiser, this year on November 19^th, which unfortunately, coincides with the first day of our TV Auction.  Corus Entertainment (Shaw), Parmalat Dairy, Toronto Kiwanis as well as others and of course Rotary are funding partners.

 

Run For Hope this year brought in $5,000 when Kevin did a half marathon as he has done for several years after first starting four year ago with a 10 km run.  The Ontario government is also a partner especially when you hire “at risk” young people. Another partner is Tapestry New Opera located in the Distillery District who come in for two weeks and help the kids write and perform an opera which is the highlight of the season. Precious Gems out of Scarborough is another participant who helps the kids make masks for the Opera performance and a film group based in Florida help with a photography project for the day campers.

 

Then there are outings to a Blue Jays game, the Zoo, Toronto Island and now they have set up a lemonade stand in downtown with a sign “Keep Calm … Drink Lemonade” Kevin says that it’s hard to refuse when a five year old takes your hand to go over to the stand to give a donation.  The kids have made $800 in just three weeks!

 

When kids leave school at the end of June there is always a retention issue or “drop off” as the summer progresses.  It is greatest for kids who have little stimulation especially in the inner city but when they are exposed to Museums, the Zoo and the kind of activities that a summer camp program stimulates much less drop off occurs.  Later, Sue Palmer gave clear examples of that phenomenon from an educational professional.

 

Kevin finished his presentation with that old African saying “It takes a village to raise a child”

 

A question and answer session went on for another six minutes (listen to the link) before President Basil presented the special Rotary Lemonade mug for Kevin’s enjoyment.

 

Links to the presentation include the introduction and Kevin Moore’s presentation as well as a power point slide: