By: Guru, Community Engagement Coordinator
The ETCBC Kids Camp is starting on August 10th, 2020 which I will be working alongside Community Engagement Coordinator, Jonathan and Pastor Derek. I have little experience in actually hosting and leading a summer camp, and have not had the opportunity to lead one with young children. I mention this because it is much more difficult to coordinate a summer camp with younger children than it is with older kids, especially online. This will be a difficult challenge to overcome at the start, however, as the summer camp kids and I begin to adjust to an online format I believe that the camp will become a lot more fun, which is the most important part of the camp. I’m looking forward to a lot of the activities that we’ve prepared and some of them do put me in a situation I have never been in before, however, I view them as a valuable learning experience in helping me understand who I am and just having a fun time with others.
Another important event that happened from the last blog post to this one, was the release of the 2020 Summer Guide. We’ve been working on the Summer Guide for nearly a month now, since the start of the summer, and it has finally been released, for everyone to enjoy. We’ve ensured to include Personal Health and Safety sections and locations practice physical distancing to minimize the risk of getting sick. There are also a multitude of sections to satisfy many different readers, these sections include Summer Camps, Free Activities, Restaurants, Parks and Beaches, Museums, Arts and Crafts and other enjoyable destinations. So far it has had a few positive reviews and hopefully, it can help people liven up their summer!
As for the Church of St.Jude and the Deacon’s Pantry Food Bank, we’ve created an improved brochure to make it easier for people to understand what is needed at the food bank and how to donate any extra items they may have. We also created a promotional video for the Deacon’s Pantry Food Bank in an attempt to increase donations as people have donated much less due to the ongoing pandemic. A Google Form was also created so that donations can be organized much more efficiently and makes it easier for donators to apply online.
Overall I believe that the past few weeks have been very productive and I’ve been able to learn a lot from the experiences of helping a food bank, creating guides for others to read, and about summer kids camps and I hope to do more and learn more in the future.