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April Reflections

Adieu, April.

April is coming to a close and May is surprisingly already preparing to present itself. As you know, April is a month dedicated to increasing understanding of and love for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Those involved in Camp Encourage spend each day furthering our knowledge and pouring our hearts into providing an opportunity where we can share goodness with those with ASD.

We hope that this focused month brought many of you a deeper understanding of those with ASD. May your understanding extend beyond the month of April. Continue to widen your eyes and open your hearts to those with ASD. Do all you can to see life through each individual’s eyes. We wholeheartedly promise you won’t regret the intentional focus and the often brilliant perspectives.

As the ever-so-wise Winnie Dunn writes, “Sometimes we need to create a context that is more supportive, a strategy which acknowledges that the challenges children face do not reside within them, but rather in the space between the children and their contexts. This is how we reduce judgment, create resilience, and increase acceptance, so that differences are just a DIFFERENCE, not a source of disorder, but rather what makes a person interesting, quirky, funny…HUMAN.”

A reflection of 2019 thus far. So much to celebrate already…

My goodness, life has been good at Camp Encourage! Days have been busy and nights have been long but our cause is OH so good so our wee staff trucks along with joyful hearts. In the past few months, we’ve released a new program to keep our campers socially connected, updated our mission, created new brochures, spread the word of our services through speaking opportunities and community resource fairs, held yet another memory-packed overnight camp, shared joy with 400 An Evening with the ‘Rents guests, kicked off the Camps For Kids Matching Campaign, have received amazing support from local foundations and small businesses (thank you Kyle’s Gift, Target, Wal-Mart, The Behavior Project, Bier Station, Hurt’s Donut, and Salty Iguana), and are now gearing up for:

  • our Financial Review (as we value quality, accountability, and transparency),
  • our two summer camp sessions,
  • additional Connections outings, and
  • S’Mores and Pours!

We appreciate each of you that join us in putting our mission into motion! You are a crucial part of the magic of Camp Encourage. If you’d like to find out how to get involved–as there are OH so many options–contact us or visit our website.

A Reflection by Kelly Lee, Executive Director of Camp Encourage

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