HAPPY TRAILS FOR KIDS
Our grant of $12,078 funds a mobile photography lab to create custom photo albums to document and preserve memories experienced at Happy Trails Camp for foster youth. Happy Trails broadens the experience of children growing up in the foster care system by providing youth with enriching outdoor camp adventures, mentorships, and a year-round community where “kids can be kids”. Approximately 400 youth a year, ages 7 to 18, will have workshops with the tools needed to create a photographic record of camp adventures, capturing a piece of childhood they can take home with them. Often, children growing up in the foster care system do not have photos of their family, friends and even of themselves. Many are separated from siblings, but are reunited with them at camp sessions. The new equipment will allow the kids to participate in taking and selecting the photos to create scrapbooks, so they can leave camp with a photo album of their cabin, siblings, and themselves, thereby serving as potentially the only photographic record of their childhood.