The view is astounding. A rolling carpet of green draped across southern Indiana hills as far as the eye can see. Anna sits atop the 50-foot alpine climbing tower taking in all of God’s creation. The cool breeze prickles at her sweaty skin, bringing relief from the warm summer sun.
Climbing a structure like this is a frequent activity at summer camps across the U.S. For Anna, however, this isn’t something she thought she’d be able to do.
Anna has a tracheostomy, and such a climb wouldn’t normally be possible. But the staff at CHAMP Camp — a week-long summer camp for youths with tracheostomies and others who require technological respiratory assistance — is prepared to help create a camp experience for those who never would have otherwise.
Later, after descending the tower via hoist, Anna will take a swim in the nearby lake, ride a fully accessible zip line, do some adaptive, therapeutic archery and fishing, and make crafts at the creative arts facility. She will experience summer camp just like any other kid, and for the first time, two Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) students get to be part of making that happen.
Psychology majors Kayla Jones and Lotus Aaron took the opportunity their professor Nancy McCurdy offered: a chance to serve the least of these in an experiential learning practicum. Working alongside physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, occupational and physical therapists, Child Life specialists, and even a camp chaplain (though the camp isn’t religiously affiliated), Jones and Aaron received essential experience working with youths who have exceptional needs. They lived in the cabins with the campers, hearing their stories and observing their behavior up close.
Through deliberate design and stubborn adaptation, CHAMP Camp is able to give kids access to a traditional summer camp experience like any other kid. For 36 years, their campers have enjoyed and fully participated in outdoor summer camp activities including swimming, canoeing, and climbing that encourage confident independence and self-esteem to create memories that last a lifetime.
“When we started camp, what we really believed was that if medical science was going to save lives, then those lives needed to be worth living,” said McCurdy, a Certified Child Life Specialist at Payton Manning Children’s Hospital and a co-founder of CHAMP Camp. “The beauty of it was for the kids; they got to see professionals as just fun, silly people who like to play pranks, who like to get dirty, who like to throw rocks in the water.”
Now in her second year as an adjunct professor at IWU, McCurdy knew connecting her students with the camp’s mission would prove fruitful. They would receive exposure to the medical, emotional, and social needs of children with profound disabilities, and to what McCurdy frames as faith, hope, and love practiced under real pressure.
“Our students here were the cheerleaders, the encouragers,” said McCurdy. “When kids said, ‘I can't do that, I'm afraid,’ they were able to help them face those fears.”
In this three-credit practicum with no cost beyond tuition, set up with Chair of Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Psychology Tim Steenberg, students keep journals, write a paper on a counselor who modeled the Christian faith, and do a final project on the family impact. Next year McCurdy hopes to add two social work and two nursing students.
Interacting with young people who have disabilities at such close proximity was a life changing experience for Jones and Aaron. Though they were not responsible for the more technical needs of the campers, they had a front-row seat for all of the camp’s intricate adaptations and better understood what it would be like to live without being able to breathe independently or move without constraint.
They also saw them smile through it all. “It ruins my day if I have a headache,” said Aaron. “But these kids are going through so much more, and they’re so happy.”
Doubtless, the campers would maintain their cheery dispositions regardless, but the tireless efforts of these IWU students and their fellow counselors created a normal — even exceptional — camp experience for kids who otherwise wouldn’t know what that is like. “Every kid deserves to have that,” said Jones. “Just because you have a tracheostomy or other disability shouldn’t mean you can’t do what everybody else does. I wanted to be a part of that.”
With new CHAMP Camp positions opening next summer for additional IWU students, opportunities to widen your perspective and serve kids in this unique way are expanding. Jones and Aaron said they would both like to stay involved with the camp going forward.
“It’s about faith. It’s about hope. It’s about love,” McCurdy said, tears filling her eyes. “Not only for the camper, not only for their team, their fellow colleagues, but perhaps most importantly for themselves.” If there were ever an opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ, to serve the least of these, to be a world changer, it is in creating a summer camp experience for young people who couldn’t without significant help. Even though the camp itself isn’t directly affiliated with any faith tradition, this is loving God and loving others.
