Organizers plan bigger, better RFKC next year

by

Dick Peterson

It’s been only a few weeks since 26 kids full of memories and reminders piled into a bus to rejoin their foster families after five days at Royal Family Kids Camp and already camp organizers are gearing up for next year’s event.

They want to do it better next time.

“The impact on the kids was enormous,” says camp director Chuck Peterson, but it was also the first camp in South Carolina held specifically for boys and girls, ages 7 to 11, in the state’s foster care system. Like any event after its first run, there’s room for improvement.

“I’ll take that ten-month checklist. I’ll retype it and put in ‘send this form to these people on this date.’ I’ll really flesh it out.” He says the checklist, which was included in the three-inch-thick manual the national RFKC organization supplied, and the actual camp he, Lauren White and Robin Boehler attended at the University of Northern Alabama, helped to make this first-in-the-state camp for foster kids a success. But he also says they learned some valuable lessons that can only improve the camping experience for next year’s group.

Most immediately pressing is the need for raising funds. Chuck estimates next year’s camp will cost $20,500 to cover expenses. He plans to double the number of kids who attend and reduce the $12,000 contribution from Crossroads Community Church. He plans to keep closer ties with Department of Social Services in Dorchester, Berkeley, Charleston and Colleton counties to know their meeting schedules and follow up on promises they make to recruit campers. And he plans to enlarge the cadre of volunteer support, especially for the set-up and tear-down phases of camp operation.

But for Chuck, Lauren and Robin, and for the other volunteer staff and people lending behind-the-scenes support, money, schedules and logistics are only important because of the children who attend.

“Many of these kids are angry and they don’t even know why. It comes out in weird places, it won’t go away and it’s coming out now. We’re used to people being angry for a reason. We’re not used to people having excess anger to burn off.” Chuck recalled one boy whose counselor was trying to transition him from one camp event to another. He’s nine years old and he lit up like a neon light. “This was a new thing for us. We have to put on masks to hide our emotions.”

He also saw children with low self esteem. At least one, he said, couldn’t write his name. He estimates most of the children are in the state system because of neglect, and some because they were abused. There was a girl who needed glasses. The lenses were scratched and the bridge was broken and taped. The frames were cutting her nose. “We took care of that, and we’re thinking next year maybe we need to do a vision test for these kids. Maybe we can have an optometrist who can support us.” Now that he has seen the needs, the ideas keep coming – ways to show these kids how important and uniquely special they are.

Chuck’s heart for foster children began in an unlikely setting: karate class. “My first Kenpo karate instructor, Bob White – I started with him 37 years ago in Costa Mesa, Calif. Last year he was doing a seminar I really wanted to go to. I posted on the Kenpo net forum that I and 20 of my closest Kenpo friends would like to go, but it was a 2,300-mile drive. Any chance you can videotape it? He replied that the benefits go to the Royal Family Kids Camp, and if I’ll hold a fundraiser for RFKC, he’ll fly to South Carolina and make it work.”

Chuck says the offer made him wonder what was such a big deal that his friend and former karate instructor would devote his time to fly across the country to support it. “So I went online to find out where the nearest camp was.” It was in Asheville, N.C.

“I’m going to do a fundraiser in Charleston for a camp in Asheville?” Chuck knew that wouldn’t work. No one would get behind it, so he started to look into what this RFKC was all about, what it would take to start a camp and what resources to start a camp were within grasp.

“What happened was that the Lord said, “You do it. You do the camp.”

As a middle school teacher, Chuck has a heart for kids. He teaches rape prevention and self defense to women – he estimates about 400 by now – and he teaches karate to kids. “The idea is teaching people to defend themselves against predators, sexual and otherwise. These kids, who go to RFKC, need protection. So it just grabbed me.”

Chuck took his ministry idea to the elders at Crossroads and followed a suggestion from Pastor Peppy to approach Lauren White and Robin Boehler to work with him. “We needed about $1,500 to go through training in Alabama, and four people wrote checks to cover it. Our training was paid for before we went. And that’s how it got started.”

Training taught them a lot, but they also learned a lot along the way, Chuck says. “There’s a training binder and a director’s manual, and they’re each three inches thick. I went there and thought, there’s no way they can give six inches of information, and now I look through it and I need more.” Chuck realized there were 10 years of experience distilled into that material, there was the checklist and “for the few odds and ends, I can make phone calls.

“My lessons learned: I’ll go back and fill in very specific things, really flesh it out. Next time around my phone will start beeping when it’s time to put things in the mail.”

The checklist was fund raising, recruiting staff and support, and working with DSS to get the kids to be the campers. Specific positions were filled and background checks made on the people who filled them. Material, people and processes, the checklist was pretty thorough. “Most of our lessons learned have to do with processes, rather than with people or materials,” Chuck says.

Just as no camp can run without the material, people and processes to support it, it can never be a camp without campers, and at RFKC everything focuses on showing the campers how special and important they are – members of God’s royal family. That’s why everything’s purple, Chuck says. It’s the color of royalty, and from beginning to end RFKC treats its campers to a royal good time.

Each morning began with Breakfast Club, which included a puppet show from Abby Clark and friends, and music led by Lauren White. Crafts and games – enough that one kid attending camp for the full five years would have a different activity each year – were designed to give each camper a sense of accomplishment and success. While the boys were busy with activities, the girls were swimming, and then they’d switch.

“In the evening we had the royal court, our drama that took us through the story of Esther. Jennifer Sauer, Curt Sauer, Katherine Grey Sauer and Jordan Thorp were the primary actors with help from Evie Inabinet. The play was first rate. Jennifer Sauer teaches drama at the Rollings School for the Arts, so you can imagine. They also took the kids through the story of Daniel.”

Those were the everyday activities, Chuck said, but the kids also enjoyed fishing and canoeing. “And on Wednesday afternoon we had Everybody’s Birthday Party,” which Chuck says was an absolute highlight. “Happily Ever After brought out two waterslide jump castles, we had a 90-foot Slip and Slide, and Terry Yarborough brought his petting zoo with a goat, a pony and a little fawn.”

And birthday cakes – ten of them – one for each month in which at least one camper has a birthday. It was the first time some of them had blown out candles. Some of the kids didn’t want to take their gifts. They never had a birthday present before, and they were asking what they had to do to get them and ‘Why are you giving this to me?’”

Everybody received a journal. “They were so excited that there was a secret pocket in it. It was just a place to put pens, but to them it was a secret pouch.”

For the boys, Chuck says the highlight was the low ropes course, a problem-solving event. One problem was a teeter-totter about 20 feet long and 12 feet wide. They had to get on it one boy at a time and keep it balanced until all 16 boys were on one end or the other. The Wobbly Woozy was a two-cable bridge from one post to another, but close to the ground. The only way to could get across was for one boy to face another and each put his hands on his buddy’s shoulders for support. “These boys have been shoving each other all week and here they have to cooperate by holding each other to make this work.”

And then there’s the Nitro Crossing, two platforms with a rope between to swing from one to the other. No problem when the rope was in reach and the only trick was to fit all 16 boys on one platform in the end.  But when the platforms were moved farther apart and the rope was out of reach, it took the initiative of one boy to jump the chasm, catch the rope, swing to the other side, and pass the rope back to the next boy. “I gave him big kudos for that,” Chuck says.

These boys need to hear from their dads that they can do it, that they can succeed, Chuck says. “And the girls need to hear from their dads, ‘You’re precious, you’re special and you’re worth fighting for.’” And that’s what they heard at the afternoon tea party. They dressed in gowns and frilly party dresses, wore makeup donated by Mary Kay and Avon, were driven to the door of a Southern mansion. As their names were announced, they were escorted in to meet Miss Charleston, Miss North Charleston and Miss Charleston Teen.

On Friday they had the Polar Bear Swim. “We dumped chests of ice cubes into the swimming pool. The ice didn’t last a minute before it melted, but it didn’t matter. For the kids, it was like they were jumping into the Bering Sea.

“The Letters to God was really cool. We went out into a big field and tied letters to helium balloons and mailed them by letting the balloons float into the sky and out of sight.” But one balloon wouldn’t fly high and away. It was tied with string instead of ribbon, and was too heavy to float. “So we did a re-do, and tied extra balloons to the letter. Because it was late, we sent it ‘special delivery’.” Some were asking, ‘Do you think airplane pilots can read it as they fly by?’ “It was definitely an opportunity to express a sense of wonder.”

Besides the journal, every child received a quilt with his or her name on the back, a big card with their name on it, a Bible with something written in it by their counselor along with the meaning of their name and a relevant scripture verse, and a photo album. The first page of each photo album was of the RFKC team and the second page was of them with their name card and their counselor. Chuck says that some of the kids have been bounced around to so many foster homes that they lose their sense of identity and don’t really know who they are. “The next thing is a little letter from the counselor, and after that It’s a free-for-all until the last page where there’s a picture of Gracie.” Gracie, the camp’s Labrador retriever, is a permanent fixture there and managed to attend every event during RFKC week.

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