Camp Lajwa

Following is a portion of an email I received a few days ago from a fellow volunteer, Scott Hill, calling for volunteers to help with a camp for special needs citizens of St. Lucia. I have been to a few of the planning sessions for this camp and was placed in charge of the camp's T-shirt design, shown below. The National Council of and for Persons with Disabilities motto is "The Ability to Overcome the Disability," so this is what I kept in mind when creating the logo.


(Scott's email - )
Sheldon is a 16 year old who has muscular dystrophy, which attacks the muscular system. Sheldon lives in an isolated area of St. Lucia. His family is poor and does not own a vehicle. Symptom free when he was born, his disease began to manifest itself when he was about 5 years old and has progressed to the point where he no longer has any use of his arms, hands or legs. He cannot comfortably sit in his wheelchair for more than 30 minutes at a stretch so he spends most of his days lying down. Although he is a bright and engaging teen, his days are spent watching TV or listening to music as he has not attended school for several years. As a consequence of all these factors, Sheldon has few friends and virtually no social or recreational outlets.

The National Council of and for Persons with Disabilities (NCPD) is sponsoring Camp Lajwa (translation: Camp Joy) in mid-July for Sheldon and 99 other children with disabilities. The camp will be broken into two groups for the first day (Pigeon Island for the north, somewhere in or near Soufriere for the south); this day will mostly be taken up with arts and crafts, swimming, some athletics, and other activities. The two camps will come together in the southern part of the island for the second day for friendly competition (sack races, etc.) and other activities.

(Scott and his wife, Lois' blog can be found here.)

Some Kids and a Book and Me

My latest project is a biweekly reading group at the Soufriere Primary School. Last week I distributed announcements to the third and fourth grade classes inviting students to hear a story before school on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Expecting only a few students to show, I was delighted to find a group of more than 40 kids waiting for Tuesday’s reading. Today gathered only a few less with 37. We are reading Roald Dahl’s The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me in segments and enjoying every page. I was impressed today to see how well the children remembered what we read last week and look forward to the coming weeks of morning stories!