CAP Camp
Children and teens who are receiving counseling through CAP are also invited to participate in one of HPH Hospice’s annual camps. The latter are largely made possible due to the generous financial support of the United Way of Pasco County and Florida Medical Clinic, Zephyrhills. Middle school children can choose to attend a weekend camp that’s held every March in Brooksville. There are one-day camps in the summer for elementary school children. The camps focus on helping young people realize that there are others close in age who are also grieving. Activities such as art therapy, team building and a memorial service honoring the loved one who has passed away are important camp components.
For more information about CAP, call (800) 486-8784.
The last weekend CAP Camp was held in March of 2011.
Click HERE for a photo gallery of the March 2010 Camp.
Click HERE for a photo gallery of the March 2009 Camp.
Click HERE for a photo gallery of the March 2008 Camp.
Click HERE for a photo gallery of the 6-10-08 Day Camp in New Port Richey.
Click HERE for a photo gallery of the 6-13-08 Day Camp in Floral City.
Click HERE for a photo gallery of the 6-17-08 Day Camp at Glen Oaks Country Club.
Volunteering for CAP Camp
I’ve just completed my first weekend as a CAP Camp volunteer. It was an exhausting, but exhilerating experience! I arrived early Friday afternoon and signed in with Paula. After unloading my bags and helping to make luminaries at the Oaks, it was time to greet the kids now arriving on the busses.
Jeanie and I were assigned to take a golf cart and bring the kids’ gear and luggage to their various cabins. We got a glimpse of how immense the Campground was; and boy-oh-boy our legs were sure feeling it later in the weekend!
After the children and volunteers were settled in we were all treated to a delicious donated dinner of hotdogs and hamburgers.
Saturday was a BIG day, beginning after breakfast with a series of physical challenges for the teams of kids from different cabins. Not having specific assignments, a few of us volunteers walked from challenge to challenge, cheering the kids on. These were NOT easy challenges for them: scaling a high wall, balancing all together on a beam and then a teeter-totter, and on ropes, climbing through a “web.” These kids worked very hard as teams to solve these difficult challenges, and by days end had formed into tightly-bonded groups.
In the afternoon, the kids were given more relaxed activities in the game room and swimming in the pool, and so forth. Also, ceramic masks were being painted at another location.
We volunteers were put to work preparing for the upcoming evening and Sunday activities. I was assigned to help assemble the informational folders to be given to the parents on Sunday. After we completed that we joined other volunteers in “beading”, which is putting beads on pipe-cleaners to later be used by campers and volunters to make special memory bracelets.
After dinner we walked to Magnolia cabin, where we volunteers had earlier prepared the room for the “Black and White” ceremony. The volunteers were now brought in and shown how the ceremony would take place, with only candles for lighting. After we left the cabin, the children waiting outside were ushered in and their ceremony began.
While this was taking place, the volunteers were waiting quietly nearby. Paula soon instructed us to begin lighting the 250 luminaries we had earlier distributed along a long path leading to the large field where the final evening ceremony would take place.
We lit the luminaries along the road, ending in the field in a large circle of lit luminaries and tiki torches. Later, as the children walked slowly and quietly to the circle of dim lights, they carried with them the messages they had composed while in the Black and White ceremony. These messages would be for their lost loved ones.
When everyone, including the young campers and volunteers, was assembled, the ceremony began. It consisted of soft new-wave background music, a quiet talk about the loss of loved ones, and, finally, placing their messages in a large, woven branch “nest” to be set aflame to offer the messages up to the night sky and the spirits of their loved ones.
The silence continued throughout the ceremony, broken only by the occasional sound of a tearful camper.
This was indeed the most profound and moving moment of the weekend, shared by the children and volunteers. The mood continued even afterwards, when counselors stood by in the cabins to help the kids deal with their emotions.
My fellow volunteers and I went back to our rooms to catch up on some much needed rest.
On Sunday morning, after breakfast, I was assigned, with a few other volunteers, to watch small children in the playground near the front gate, while the parents attended a meeting. We then walked the kids up to the Cypress cabin and joined the group to watch awards being presented and the video taken over the weekend. Again, a BIG lump in my throat while watching the past evening’s ceremony!
After this we enjoyed a picnic lunch, then helped with the final clean-up and emptying out of the Oaks and Cypress cabins. Before we knew it, the weekend was over!
I feel privileged and proud to have been a small part of such a beautiful time in the lives of these young people who have suffered a tragic loss.
Thank you HPH Hospice for this opportunity.
- Gloria Kozlosky
