What began as a reluctant volunteer gig as a photographer was an annual labor of affection for David Powdrell, a Carpinteria resident and longtime shooter round city, who performs keyboards and cowbell with The Nombres and has a day job as a CPA.
A pal referred to as 15 years in the past, “and requested if I’d drive to UCSB to {photograph} the Junior Wheelchair Sports activities Camp, a camp for teenagers that I knew completely nothing about,” shared Powdrell. He reluctantly agreed, however he stated he was “assured that these children can be unhappy, mad, and maybe depressing.”
Powdrell continued, “I used to be utterly fallacious! The youngsters have been joyful, grateful, smiling, laughing, and enjoyable! After an hour of photographing that Monday morning 15 years in the past, I referred to as my spouse and requested her to cancel all my enterprise appointments. I’d be photographing these superb children for your complete week, hoping to fill their scrapbooks and provides them digital images to share with family and friends dwelling outdoors the world. In the middle of the week, they might go on to perform unbelievable acts of braveness, make lifelong mates, and smile and snort with gratitude of their eyes.”
Sponsored by Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital and Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital Basis, the annual week-long Junior Wheelchair Sports activities Camp started in 1986 and is the one camp of its form on the Central Coast. Not solely do all campers attend without cost, however free transportation can be supplied from Oxnard, Santa Maria, Lompoc, Carpinteria, and Santa Barbara. (Campers from Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and Temecula are additionally invited to attend.)
The camp supplies a secure and supportive setting for mobility-challenged children to take part in a variety of sports activities. Choices vary from newbie to advanced-level wheelchair sports activities and recreation actions, together with rugby, basketball, tennis, hand biking, swimming, boxing, scuba diving, racquetball, an impediment course, a climbing wall, a ropes course, dancing, dodgeball, pickleball, and even “a competition of enjoyable.”
Powdrell is among the many greater than 50 volunteers who assisted the roughly 40 campers (ages 6 to 21) final month on the UCSB Recreation Heart. Along with volunteers, counselors and instructors are wheelchair customers themselves, so that they turn into pure mentors to the campers on the right way to keep wholesome and lively whereas dwelling with a incapacity.
“The camp employees and volunteers are superb, devoted, and passionate,” stated Powdrell. “All of them transcend the decision of obligation to make each camper have the very best week-long expertise attainable. When the bug bites a brand new volunteer, she or he sometimes returns yr after yr.”
He continued, “The Junior Wheelchair Sports activities Camp empowers children to be extra unbiased. By means of adaptive sports activities and actions, they be taught beneficial life abilities, construct resilience, and develop a robust sense of self-worth. The camp has a optimistic influence on the psychological well-being of the kids, too. Vanity is enhanced, stress is diminished, and the sense of isolation is diminished, all resulting in a optimistic outlook on life.
“One camper shared with me that this week was the one week of the yr that he felt utterly ‘regular.’ One other shared that her city didn’t have any camps with related applications or alternatives.”
The best reward, Powdrell stated, “is when a child overcomes what they thought was not possible. One boy, who dreaded heights, climbed to the highest of the rock wall. One other, who ‘doesn’t swim,’ was scuba diving on the finish of the camp expertise.”
Powdrell has excessive reward for director René Van Hoorn, Recreation Therapist and Supervisor of Neighborhood Packages at Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital, who leads the camp, in addition to all of the employees, volunteers, sponsors, and supporters. “They need to be celebrated, for they’re making the world a greater place, one little one at a time … let’s hope that the Junior Wheelchair Sports activities Camp evokes others to create related alternatives for youngsters with disabilities all over the world,” stated Powdrell.
Click on right here for a video concerning the camp. For extra details about subsequent summer season’s camp, name (805) 569-8999 x82102.
