The weekly after-school group I’ve been hosting is coming to an end next week. It’s been a good run of activities this spring, after a wacky and wobbly experimental fall session. Toward the end of this session, we leading adults got together to talk about ideas for how we could finish on an upswing and possibly get something modest rolling for summer with these same kids and maybe a few more.
The first meeting to discuss those ideas was two weeks ago today. There is a new Bahá’í who lives near me and has some experience with one-week vacation camps sponsored by religious communities. She was invited to our first meeting two weeks ago and had a lot of powerful ideas to suggest in terms of outreach and working to incorporate more children in the mix, and really set an example in the city focusing on character education.
We’ve taken her suggestions and ideas to heart and since then it has been a whirlwind of new ideas and plans set in motion. The project has a name—Unity Camp 2005—and will take place for a week in late July, culminating in a day-long family-style picnic celebration in Forest Park, possibly with entertainment provided.
Now we’re strategizing on a weekly basis and looking for a church basement to use. Meanwhile, the weekly group is coming to an end, and we need to look forward to see how we can continue a relationship with these children, when we have not had much parental involvement. The children are wonderful and seem to have bonded as a group of eleven kids.
I’m looking at having some “outreach Saturdays” where I can be available to try to connect with some of the parents of the children I’ve been working with, and maybe have a flyer available to give them so they have something on paper indicating what we have been doing with the group, and what the Unity Camp is. We are trying to make a bridge here between the existing needs of the community where I live—kids learning how to be good people—and the idea of religious teachings providing some helpful guidance, without making people feel offended or frightened by the idea of looking at religious teachings together. For some, it’s a tricky line to walk.