What is Send-A-Kid To Camp?
The Send-A-Kid To Camp Program is an initiative of the Sudbury Manitoulin Children’s Foundation (SMCF) that provides deserving children between the ages of 5 and 14 with the opportunity to attend summer camp.
Some parents cannot afford the cost of sending their children to camp; some children live in violent or abusive households. With this program, children who otherwise don’t have the opportunity to enjoy such an experience get to live out the fun, freedom, and excitement that summer camp brings. With Send-A-Kid To Camp, deserving children get to just be ‘kids’.
This program has helped close to over 20,000 disadvantaged children experience the joys of summer camp since its initiation in 1984.
Our Goal
Our goal is to ensure that we are in a position to offer every child referred to the Send-A-Kid To Camp Program the opportunity to attend summer camp. This program is designed to encompass the whole camping experience for marginalized children by covering all camp fees, assisting with transportation to and from camp, and providing basic necessities and sleeping bags for children who may need them. We strive to never turn a child away, and for the majority of the years this program has been running, it has been successful at reaching this goal. The average cost to send a child to summer camp was $600 in 2023 - this cost continues to rise every year. With the generous help of our community and various foundation corporations and other partners this program continues to meet its goal by providing much needed camping opportunities for those marginalized children who so desperately are in need of some sunshine and happy times.
The Benefits Camp Brings to Children
Camp can create personal memories that will last a lifetime. It offers a child the chance to belong. Singsongs, team games, or a common purpose helps provide balance and attachment to a cabin, camp, and/or situation. It can help children feel rooted and in control of their lives while giving them a sense of possibility.
The number one reason that kids love camp is ownership. The journey belongs to the child as the parent steps back to let it happen. At camp, they can really be themselves. They are 100% in charge of their memories right from the first battle – and triumph - with homesickness, getting a little dirty, dealing with frustration while having fun, to the sadness felt when camp is done, and new-found friends go back to their respective families. Summer camp offers these children all the above and so much more. If nothing else, a week at summer camp gives them a break from often stressful home situations.
Some of the benefits include:
Meet New Friends
Learn New Skills
Appreciate Nature
Create Happy Memories
Find Positive Role Models
Experience Postive Self Growth
- Teaches leadership skills that can carry over to everyday life.
- All camps have a spiritual component—spiritual health, fostered from organized or non-organized religious teaching is an important aspect of personal wellness.
- Helps build resilience as they learn to tackle a wide range of tasks and emotions all on their own.
- Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood. Summer camp fosters respect and connectedness with nature.
- New friendships are formed at camp. These social bonds between campers are often deep and lasting and can result in lifelong friendships.
- Offers introductions to a variety of people, cultures, and backgrounds in a safe and structured environment.
- Camp culture can reinforce positive values and ethical conduct.
- Provides opportunities for increased physical activity, play, and imagination.
- Teaches children that it is okay to fail.
- Offers children a chance to feel a sense of belonging. All those goofy cheers and songs, the sense of common purpose and attachment to the identity that camps promote go a long way to offering children a sense of being rooted.
- Camp is a place where children get the experiences they need to build upon their coping strategies. Coping strategies help children through the simple challenges of learning how to build a fire, going on a hike, or conquering a high ropes course.
- Camp is an excellent environment to learn and practice positive risk taking.
How The Program Works
SMCF works with existing summer camps located throughout Ontario, but it also operates two of its own day camps. Our SMCF operated day camps are SMCF Sports Sampler Camp, and SMCF Arts and Leisure Camp. Running our own day camps allows us to create more opportunities for the children in our community.
Our SMCF operated day camps offers daily transportation to the camp for those that need it, as well as transportation of all the children to the various activities and excursions held by the SMCF camps.
Our SMCF camps and partnership camps, allow us to pair children with a camp based on their specific interests, whether it be general day camps, horse, religious, francophone, etc. We are proud to have a wide variety of access to different types of camps. The “Send-A-Kid To Camp” Program is designed to encompass the whole camping experience for the campers by covering all camp fees, assisting with transportation to and from overnight camps, and providing basic necessities and sleeping bags for children who may need them.
SMCF also assists the parents in completing camp forms, either in our office or by an SMCF staff member driving to their home or a central location around the community where the parent can meet the staff for assistance.
For more information on our SMCF camps and our partnered summer camps, please see our camp listings.
How to Send-A-Kid To Camp
Know a child who should be given the opportunity to attend camp? The Sudbury Manitoulin Children's Foundation receives referrals to the Send-A-Kid To Camp Program from over 50 registered social agencies. We want to provide all children, from all walks of life, with the chance to experience camp. If you know or are currently caring for a child whom you feel would benefit from our program please get in touch with the relevant agency on our referral agencies page. Our contacts within each agency will assist you with a camp referral. If this option is not available to you or you have further questions please contact our office.