Camp Mobile Rotary prepares to send 100 campers to Camp ASCCA

By Lindsay Mott | AL.com Contributor
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on July 25, 2014 at 8:03 AM, updated July 25, 2014 at 8:21 AM
Original story here.

For the past 30 years, Goodwill Easter Seals of the Gulf Coast and the Rotary Club of Mobile have teamed up to send local campers with disabilities to Alabama’s Special Camp for Children and Adults for a traditional summer camp experience full of horseback riding, tubing, archery and more.

This year, the local Goodwill Easter Seals will 100 of their clients from the South Alabama area to the camp at Lake Martin. The campers will depart July 27 with a grand send-off event.

Locally, the camp is known as Camp Mobile Rotary, and they participate in their own week of camp at the Lake Martin facility, which hosts camps year-round for different groups. The Rotary Club of Mobile has been involved with this project for the past 30 years, paying most of the cost for the campers to attend as many of the families would not be able to send them otherwise.

“With the generous help of the Rotary Club of Mobile, for the past 30 years, we’ve sent 100 campers a year to give them a real camp experience and the freedom to be who they were created to be,” said Frank Harkins, President/CEO of Goodwill Easter Seals of the Gulf Coast. “At Camp ASCCA, their disability doesn’t stop them. It doesn’t get in their way of having a rich and fun-filled week of swimming, fishing, being with friends and simply enjoying life — all of this is accessible to them. And back home, mom and dad get a break from the daily care giving. For a lot of our campers, this is the most important and exciting week of the year.”

Camp activities include playing on the splash pad, fishing, swimming, horseback riding, tubing, shooting bows and arrows, a talent show and more. The trained staff at Easter Seals Camp ASCCA have made a way for these campers with disabilities to experience typical camp-type events, even going so far as having the ability to let someone who may be completely paralyzed ride a zip line.

The camp provides a place for the campers to have a real summer camp experience, and their families don’t have to worry about their experience while they’re gone. The camp is a nationally recognized leader in therapeutic recreation and provides a wide array of activities on 230 wooded acres around Lake Martin. The camp falls in line with Goodwill’s goal of creating recreational activities for people with disabilities to have something fun to do.

Frank Lott III, a Rotary member and Goodwill Easter Seals board member, has been attending the camp send-off event for many years. He said his father, who was also on the Goodwill board and in Rotary, took him to one of the very first sendoffs years ago when he was around the age of seven. He got to see the campers get on the buses to head to camp and he has been around the program for many years since.

“Campers definitely look forward to it and you can tell when they’re loading up how excited they are,” Lott said. “It’s an opportunity for them to have a chance to do things that they can’t do.”

He said that giving these campers a chance to experience a camp like this and the fact that it’s still going strong after 30 years is a positive reflection on the local community.

“It’s a testament to the dedication of both Rotary and Goodwill to keep it going and keep it growing and make it better and better each year,” Lott said.

For more information on Goodwill Easters Seals of the Gulf Coast and its programs visit, Gesgc.org. For more information about Camp ASCCA visit www.campascca.org.