Supporting Camp Nunez Children Through the Pandemic

Camp Nunez is an extraordinary camp program that we offer here at, California Human Development to kids who may not otherwise get the opportunity to experience. Camp Nunez provides kids with the opportunity to gain leadership and social skills. We are grateful to have received funding from the Sonoma County Vintners Foundation to host and prepare for our 2020 Camp Nunez trip. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to provide camp as we have done in the past. However, the Sonoma County Vintners Foundation allowed us to still make use of the funds granted even though we were unable to host camp this past year. The Camp Nunez team brainstormed and reached out to parents, teachers, and counselors on how to best support students that would have attended Camp. We discovered that many families did not have access to internet or laptops. Thankfully, the school district began to provide households with hot spots and laptops, we were also able to identify another need. Several of the families did not have access to printers and while most of the work is done online, oftentimes there was a need for students to print packets or essays to review and edit. Fortunately, this will help families even after the pandemic. Our low-income community is often the most affected by digital disparities. We are happy to have been able to help close that gap, even a little bit with these printers and supplies.

The students that were chosen to receive printers and additional supplies were referred by school counselors and partner agencies/programs such as Migrant Education. These are students that would have been referred for our summer camp if we were able to provide one.

As we reached out to families to inform them, they had been chosen to receive the printer and supplies the families expressed extreme gratitude and appreciation. During these hard times, printers are a need that families simply could not prioritize.

Looking for ward to Summer 2021 thanks to funding again from the Sonoma County Vintners Foundation, we will be able to provide Campers with a Virtual Recreational Series. Although things have been trending in the right direction as far as the pandemic coming to an end, CHD still felt we weren’t in a place to offer Camp Nunez in 2021. However, we didn’t let the pandemic stop another Camp without having a plan in place.

This Virtual Recreational Series will provide would-be Campers with Recreational Kits that include items like (keyboards, art supplies, journals, etc.) The goal is to get Campers to unplug and express themselves creatively after a school year full of plugged-in learning. Our Camp Nunez Counselors will also be checking in with the Campers throughout the duration of this series to ensure they are doing okay mentally. We are excited for the Camp Nunez Program to be offering this series to give Campers a constructive form of expression and foster new habits.