Kickstarting Accessibility!

A huge thank you to our friends at Kickstart Cafe.  Their recent Kickstart Your Community Dinner in partnership with Russell Farms was a great success.  Of course, the food was delicious and company was delightful.  The Community Dinner raised over $1,700 for Shepherds Camp! 

We have utilized the funds to purchase a Hoyer Lift and a Personal Ceiling Transport System.  Both will be a huge enhancement to our safety and accessibility at Shepherds Camp... making a week of camp possible for our campers who require more intensive care.

Buddy Walk 2012

Sunday, September 16th from 11:30 - 3:00

at Otsiningo Park

Bocce Ball at Arrowhead

With this weekend’s 40 degree rainy weather it is hard to believe that just last week we were enjoying a fantastic day of Bocce Ball with highs near 80 and the sun shining brightly.  It was a great day with over 100 athletes, coaches and volunteers on nine courts, for the annual Special Olympics Bocce Ball Tournament here at Arrowhead.

Many of athletes are also our campers.  It was a blessing to hear their excitement about the upcoming Shepherds Fall Retreat, just a week away.  We also had the opportunity to meet some new friends from the Special Olympics Area P, who coordinate athletes across five counties in northeast PA. 

Buddy Walk 2011

Join us next Saturday, the 17th from 11-3 at Ross Park Zoo for the 14th annual BUDDY WALK!  It is a jam-packed awareness event for Down Syndrome and developmental disabilities.  Keeping in step with the past few years, we are anticipating over 1,000 people in attendance for the walk.  With games, interactive booths, tons of food, t-shirts, the infamous basket raffle, face painting, juggling, balloon animals, Irish dancers, caricatures and prize raffles it is going to be non-stop fun.  You do not want to miss the live entertainment: Talking Hands and Brotherhood on the main stage!

$5 and a can of food for CHOW gets you all that, and of course, entrance into the Zoo! (There is no cost to individuals with developmental disabilities)

Shepherds Camp will be one of the interactive booths: featuring two of the greens from our brand new 9-hole mini golf course.  We invite you to stop by… play a few rounds of golf, grab some food, check out the live music and see the animals as we raise awareness and support our local community.

Rock 'N Roll

"But our bet is that you've never seen or heard a group quite like this, since Flame is the only touring band in the world made up entirely of disabled musicians."

- Bill Weir from Good Morning America

Check out this GREAT news story on the band Flame... our main stage guests at this year's Buddy Walk here in Binghamton. They were amazing and we already have them booked for the 2010 Buddy Walk!

Flame the band on Good Morning America

Shepherds Fall Retreat 09

The Shepherds Fall Retreat was a blast! It was a great opportunity to reunite as staff to serve many of our local campers who are big time regular attenders. We had a full house with about 50 campers, 25 staff and a handful of volunteers.

Despite some warm daytime temperatures the wind was blowing and we stayed inside. On the bright side we had great Halloween and fall time crafts. Classic camps games were a must and the campers really enjoyed Alex on guitar during Bible & Music. Saturday afternoon our campers got to make stuffed-paper bag pumpkins, hang out at the activity tables and try on a silly hat for the fall photo shoot (with Jerry the Scary Scarecrow). One of the most exciting parts of the retreat was our special guests, Talking Hands (from Achieve). They put on a great show on Saturday night, signing to all sorts of songs from Johnny Cash to the Ghostbuster's theme song. Talking Hands did a great job. Overall it was a great week seeing so many familiar faces from the summer.

A Perfect Day for Bocce

Our friends from the Special Olympics were here today. Over 50 athletes, their coaches, parents and care providers enjoyed a great afternoon of bocce ball. The weather was perfect and the hot dogs always taste fantastic after some intense games of bocce.

For us, it was an exciting opportunity to see some of our campers, meet some new friends and host the tournament for the Special Olympics.

Buddy Walk 2009

The Buddy Walk is this Saturday! I hope you will join us to help raise awareness for Down Syndrome. We are looking forward to a great day (with NO RAIN!) including the band FLAME! Check them out tomorrow Wednesday, September 16th on Good Morning America.

Day Camp 2009 [Week 1]

The first week of Day Camp was a blast. 65 of our 80 campers will be coming out again this week. We are looking forward to the week ahead, 15 new campers, and a bunch of new special guests.

Our second week of Day Camp starts TODAY!

Bocce Bash 2009

Our first 2-week session of Shepherds Camp has come to a close. Even though it has only been two weeks it feels like it has been a whole month already. Thinking back to previous summers the same was true for the beginning of each. It is the first time we as a staff are serving together. For our counselors, it is their first time caring for and living with teenagers and adults with developmental disabilities. For some of our campers it is their first time at camp... which can make for a interesting start to the program. In the past two weeks we have also had a ton of rain. The nice part about it was that it did not rain the whole time. We also had some hot days with lots of sunshine. Another new experience (well kind of new) was the Bocce Bash.

This is the third year in a row that we have partnered with our friends at the Special Olympics. The first year we hosted a bocce ball tournament - two Arrowhead teams and two Special Olympics teams played bocce ball games as our campers and visitors spectated from the sidelines. Last year we had an open invitation to play bocce ball at our FREE Picnic & Open House. However, this year we had a huge response from our friends at the Special Olympics who wanted to come out to camp for a big BOCCE BASH!

Earlier this week on Tuesday we had our first Bocce Bash of 2009. We assembled two camper teams from Arrowhead and the Special Olympics came with eight teams comprised of local athletes. We had five bocce ball courts running simultaneously for the evening as our campers, staff, parents and friends from the community cheered from the sidelines. In attendance we had 50 campers, 30 staff members and 50 guests from the community (including athletes, parents and friends). That is 130 people enjoying a great evening of Bocce Ball here at Arrowhead. For us it was a great opportunity to share camp with our friends and for our campers it was an exciting program event. The whole evening was a success.

Check it out: