Texas: For Children With HIV or AIDS, a Camp Called Hope Is a Summer Place to Belong

At Camp Hope in Houston, Texas, no one thinks kids are weird for taking yucky medicine. And no one stares when someone spikes a high fever or cannot keep breakfast down. Most important, no one pulls away or calls them names because they are HIV-infected. Dr. Ana Puga brought 49 children -- one-third of the campers -- from Broward County to the 200-acre camp. They are all treated at the Children's Diagnostic and Treatment Center, a nonprofit clinic in Fort Lauderdale where Puga is medical director of the Comprehensive Family AIDS Program.

At Hope, the children mix with kids from Texas, Romania and Mexico, a reminder that HIV affects children all over the globe. Every morning, they do the routine: First breakfast, then morning meds. Next, they do a rousing version of a funny camp dance called the Cha Cha Slide. Most of the camp's counselors leading the dance are camp veterans; the counselors are black, white and brown, men and women, gay and straight.

Getting kids to Camp Hope is neither easy nor economical, feat, with tuition at about $1,000 per child. A $50,000 grant from Broward County's Children's Services Council and money from the nonprofit Fort Lauderdale-based HIV/AIDS group Tuesday's Angels covers transportation and some tuition. AIDS Foundation Houston picks up the remaining camp costs.

Camp Hope, owned by the nonprofit organization Camp for All, is one of only a handful of camps across the country giving infected kids a chance to just be kids. Earlier this summer, 67 HIV-positive children from Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties went to Boggy Creek Camp near Orlando or Camp Heartland, which runs camps near Minneapolis and Malibu, Calif.

Back to other news for August 20, 2003