Rotary Club District 7470 Assistant Governor Cassandra Graham speaks to the group of 20 students who will be attending summer camp in upstate New York thanks to the East Orange Rotary Club’s partnership with the Ralph Arrington Foundation non-profit organization on Monday, June 19th during the East Orange Rotary Club’s Summer Camp meeting in the East Orange General Hospital board room. District 7470 includes East Orange and Irvington.
IRVINGTON, NJ — The East Orange Rotary Club is sending 20 city children to the Frost Valley YMCA camp in upstate New York for two weeks this summer, thanks to a grant from the Ralph Arrington Foundation.
Rotary Club Assistant Governor Cassandra Graham of District 7470, which serves both East Orange and Irvington, said she would like to do the same thing for Irvington children.
“We appreciate any Rotary Club that would have this opportunity,” said Graham on Monday, June 19, during a planning and information meeting for parents and their children in the East Orange General Hospital Board Room. “We appreciate them bringing this to the district and partnering with them and we hope that it becomes a successful, fantastic venture, which we have no doubt that it will. Rotary looks forward to having collaborations with any types of organizations that will assist the youth and assist the community and assist internationally as well.”
Rotary is a worldwide organization with a motto of “service above self,” and Graham said the group is always seeking to partner with groups such as the Ralph Arrington Foundation, to help fulfill its service mission.
“Collaboration is essential, really, because we’re a service organization and a volunteer organization. We have partnered with the Ralph Arrington Foundation for the first time, to be able to afford these students an opportunity to go to the sleepaway camp for 12 days, all expenses paid. There are four sessions and our students are going to be in the two last sessions, either in July or August,” Tracy Cosby, president of the East Orange Rotary Club, said Monday, June 19. “Hopefully, it will be a wonderful, wonderful opportunity and, if we are successful this year, we will be afforded an opportunity to send another group back next year and perhaps double the number. This year, there were 20 slots afforded to East Orange students.”
Irvington Rotary Club President Alison Bryant is open to the idea of partnering with a nonprofit organization such as the Ralph Arrington Foundation to send township children to summer camp. She said this would be something new and different for local Rotarians.
“Cassandra Graham is in our Rotary Club and we don’t normally send anybody to camp,” Bryant said Monday, June 19. “We have sent from Irvington High School to the Rotary Youth Leadership at Drew University, but that already occurred. We didn’t send anybody this year but, in previous years, we’ve always sent two to four students — two boys and two girls.”
Bryant can appreciate the benefits of a child attending summer camp, although she admits, “I only went to camp once in like maybe the third or fourth grade.” According to Cosby and some of the other Rotarians at the meeting, there’s more to summer camp than s’mores and canoeing, when it comes to socialization and broadening horizons.
“I think that, very often, our socialization is sometimes limited and that can be any children; some children are more global than others,” Cosby said. “But if we go to school all of our lives in a particular community and we only socialize with the same people in our family, then when we walk outside of that general circle, then we’re not always prepared and I think that there can be culture shock. And it’s not just a racial culture shock; it can be an economic culture shock.
“For the most part, we’re not different. We’re all the same; we just have different backgrounds. But as human beings, once we start to talk to people, it’s really our personalities that carry the day and, if the younger we are, we get to know different people, the better off we are to not assimilate or acculturate, but to share commonalities when we get older.”
Cosby said camp is a great way to expose children, particularly urban children, to a wide range of experiences and settings that they might not otherwise get to experience, regardless of their age or social standing. Graham, an Irvington resident, agreed.
“I’m with the Irvington Rotary Club and I’m also assistant governor with Rotary District 7470 and I’m glad for this partnership with East Orange Rotary Club to send campers out to camp,” Graham said Monday, June 19. “With Rotary, we do joint ventures and … as an assistant governor, you are a liaison to a certain number of clubs and I’m the liaison to the East Orange Rotary Club and also the Irvington Rotary Club, which I am also a part of. It will be a great outdoor experience for them. They’ll get to do a lot of activities that they may not do all the time and bond with other children and have a great experience and we know how important that is.”
East Orange Rotary Club member Joyce Hodges said the goal of the camps and the organization, as a whole, is to broaden horizons and, in this case, that means broadening children’s horizons.
“We do it because we like to expose young people to other avenues and other adventures and we want to expose them to meeting other people and other cultures and people that are maybe not of their ethnic background, so that they can broaden their horizon,” said Hodges on Monday, June 19. “We don’t want them to just feel like they can be hinged in on four corners, because there is so much that they can learn from other people.”
Akila Jones is the parent of three girls who are going to summer camp for the first time, thanks to the East Orange Rotary Club and the Ralph Arrington Foundation.
“I’m very excited about the program, because I went to the same program when I lived in Orange as a child and I just know how much opportunity it’s going to give my children,” Jones said. “It’s just awesome. I went to East Orange High School and I went to Orange Middle School. But I went to the YWMCA when I was a little girl, so that’s why I feel like this is perfect for my daughters. All three of my daughters are going to camp.”
Jones’ daughter, Bethany, 10, shared her mother’s enthusiasm about going to summer camp for the first time this year.
“I get to feel how it feels to camp out,” Bethany said Monday, June 19. “I am very excited. I am worried about the bears, but not the deer. As long as they don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with them.”
Mitchell Brown, 11, is also going to be heading to camp with Bethany, her two sisters and 16 other East Orange students; his mother, Nicolette Brown, said she’s excited for him.
“We’re from Jamaica, but we’ve never been to a camp here,” Nicolette Brown said Monday, June 19. “I’m excited for him, because at least he gets to go out, meet new kids and enjoy himself. He gets to get away from home and I get to get rid of him from home and that’s good, too.”
Rotary Club member Ray Scott said he went to summer camp as a child and called it one of the best experiences of his life, helping to mold him into the man he is today.
“I went to camp when I was a kid, that’s why I know it’s such a great experience,” said Scott on Monday, June 19. “I can tie square knots, ride horses, everything. I hope, when they come back, that they have the experience of their lifetime that they will remember. They will have a memory of what they did for years and years to come, because I sure remember being in camp. It was a wonderful experience.”
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