Camp Horseshoe Offers Summertime Fun For Low Income Kids

Marlinton, Wv – Lots of kids look forward to going to summer camp. But for some low income families’, sending a child to summer camp is often well beyond the constraints of the family budget. Camp Horseshoe in Parsons, WV can make summer camp a reality for children in Pocahontas County. Laura Young, Coordinator for the Pocahontas County Family Resource Network, explains how.

“Every summer Pocahontas County gets 10 to 20 scholarships to send some of our low income children to this camp” says Young. “It’s just a wonderful opportunity for low income children to be able to go and spend a week at a summer camp. The majority of these children would not get that opportunity otherwise.”

Laura says it’s a lot any other summer camp.

“It’s just your typical summer camp; they do things like character building, walks in the woods and hikes” she says. “They teach them to swim and they have three family style meals a day at Camp Horseshoe.”

Never heard of Camp Horseshoe? Laura says there may be a reason for that.

“Historically, Pocahontas County has really not sent very many children to Camp Horseshoe simply because we’ve had a lack of transportation with these families” says Laura. “And it’s really hard for parents to send their children to Camp Horseshoe where they don’t know anyone from the county. So I applied for a grant from the Snowshoe Foundation and they agreed to pay for a bus driver from Pocahontas County to take us down there, drop up off and bring us back.”

Laura says the Board of Education has agreed to supply a bus and the fuel for the trip. She also says she will stay with the kids and if any of them get too home sick, she’ll bring them home right away.

The next step for her to is to find out who’s interested in attending the camp this July.

“Before schools out, I’m going to start visiting around to all of the elementary schools” she says.

Once she has an idea of who’s interested, as usual there is paperwork but, not to worry, Laura has all the required papers and will help completing the required documents.

“I have all the registration forms and I’ll contact the parents if any kid is interested in going” says Laura. “There are some permission slips and that sort of thing that needs to filled out, and I will help them with the paper work.”

According to Laura Young this will be a wonderful opportunity for some kids to do something they may not have been able to do in the past.