Who Goes to Summer Camp? DO-IT Does

DO-IT staff, Scholars, Ambassadors, Pals and Mentors will again be involved with computer and Internet activities at summer camps for children and youth with disabilities. Campers will send messages to their friends and family with electronic mail, use the World Wide Web for fun activities and searching for resources, and create World Wide Web home pages and on-line publications for their camps.

Between late June and early August DO-IT will be coordinating Internet activities at summer camps run by five different organizations in Washington and Minnesota. We'll start the sessions with an "All Abilities" camp offered jointly by the Easter Seal Society of Washington and the Pierce County Department of Parks and Recreation at the Easter Seal camp at Vaughn Bay, Washington. Children of all abilities will participate in a week of fun activities between June 23-26 and are encouraged to attend with a friend.

An Easter Seal session at the Vaughn Bay camp follows. This a live-in camp for youth of ages 14 and older with motor impairments mixes computing with more traditional camp experiences (July 2-8).

Camp Courage is next - July 12-21. In its third summer, this internet/college preview camp runs in partnership with the Camp Courage in Maple Lake, Minnesota. Courage campers participate in intensive Internet and college preview activities, including a field trip to nearby St. Cloud State University.

Then we're off to Rogers High School in Puyallup for a week of fun with campers in the Pierce County Parks and Recreation "Camp Lots of Fun". These younger campers with a variety of disabilities and health impairments swim, participate in crafts and games, and cruise the Internet in a computer lab at the high school. We're at Rogers from July 21-23 and again from July 28-August 1.

Beautiful Camp Waskowitz in the foothills of the Cascades at North Bend is last. A former Civilian Conservation Corps camp built in the 1930s, Waskowitz is on the national historic register. DO-IT will be working with two organizations at Waskowitz. The Muscular Dystrophy camp for youth with neuromuscular diseases takes place July 21-15. Burn Foundation of the Northwest for survivors of burn injuries hosts a camp for youth July 28-August 1. Besides using e-mail and the World Wide Web, campers at these sessions will be creating home pages for their camp and parent newsletters, ending a full summer of exciting camp activities.

You can get registration information for any of these camps by contacting the sponsoring organizations or the DO-IT office. See you there...it's your turn to bring the marshmallows.