AmeriCorps Members reflect on camp experiences

When you are an AmeriCorps Member at Easter Seals camps, you don't just change the lives of the campers you work with. Many members find that the experience changes their lives forever, too. In their own words, here's how past AmeriCorps Members have summed up the impact campers had on them.

What I Gave Away My Weekends For

Invariably when in a conversation someone will ask what I do, my first generic answer is "a student" which, after all the niceties are passed leads to what I do to support myself, I give the answer "I'm an AmeriCorps member." Seventy five percent of the time I get quizzical looks as the person rack's his or her brain for the word, trying to remember if he or she had ever heard it, maybe once in passing? I give it the simplest explanation I can "It is like the Peace corps only in America." "Oh," He or she says, and then questions me on what I do for AmeriCorps; I explain that I serve at a camp for people with disabilities.

That often leads to him or her asking what camp is like. It becomes my turn to look quizzical as I have to stop and ponder for a minute, how do I explain what camp is like? Where do I start? When I get on a roll, where do I end? Do I just talk about the fun times and activities, Thursday dances dressed up in costumes, taking a camper swimming for the first time in his or her life, bowling, tractor rides, arts and crafts out of pipe cleaners and construction paper? Or can I mention the stuff that makes you want to step back and give it all up? Refusal to eat anything but chips, the rising at 5 o'clock in the morning and not going to bed till midnight, the messes to clean, the patience you fight to have? It might sound cliche but AmeriCorps let me see that camp is laughter and tears, long hours of monotony broken by moments of activity and wonder.

I would not be honest if I did not admit that every Friday before arriving I get the urge to turn my car around and head back home. Not this weekend I want to shout, I'm too busy, too much homework, I have a family and friends who do not even know I exist anymore, and for what? A living allowance that might be livable in an underdeveloped country, endless reams of paper work that asks the same questions again and again?

Once I'm there however, I can not ever think of leaving and I often wonder how leaving could have even passed through my mind in the first place. I see the faces and I can feel the joy the campers get from just being here, a time to spend on their own, in their own special place away from school and parents and siblings. I get the chance to help them experience this and more. I give them first times and only at camp times and so many more 'times' that by this time my captive audience is not so captive as he or she listens to me babble.

Most people smile and nod when I start to explain, they do not really understand but they try for my sake, because they can tell that it means something to me, really truly means something to me deep down. AmeriCorps helped me find camp and every weekend I find it even more, a place for learning and for teaching, for laughter and for tears, and I would not change it for the world.

Thank you AmeriCorps.

More reflections from AmeriCorps Members at Easter Seals camps