This summer camp offers refuge for NYC's record-high youth homeless population

As the population of children living in New York City shelters reaches unprecedented highs, with enough homeless kids to fill Yankee Stadium , a longtime summer camp is offering these young New Yorkers a chance to temporarily leave behind the trauma of congregate living — to just be kids.

Camp Homeward Bound , now in its 40th year, will welcome about 360 children who are living in shelters or were formerly homeless to its annual summer camp about 45 miles north of the city. There, kids between 7 and 15 years old spend about two weeks swimming, biking, cooking, dancing and playing.

“Our kids are exposed to so much just by the fact that they've lost their homes, are living in shelter," said Tim Campbell, deputy executive director for programs at the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless, which runs the camp. "Just the shelter application process in general can be so emotionally taxing for their parents and then also for them being exposed to that, because there's no space often for them to be away from that process."

“The kids that we serve try to take care of their parents or younger siblings," Campbell added. "When they're here, just part of what we're trying to do is say, ‘You don't have to worry about that right now.'"

For the last two summers, the number of children whom the camp serves has grown, and migrant children now make up about half of the campers, according to program leaders . Children come to one of three sessions that last 16 days and can return every summer, even after they move out of homeless shelters. Some come back to work as counselors.

Camp director Bev McEntarfer said her organization has hired more Spanish-speaking staff to work with migrant children from Venezuela and Ecuador and brought on some French-speaking staff. She said that in recent years, many of the children have arrived at the camp with fewer items like proper shoes and warm jackets, which the camp provides through donations.

Camp Homeward Bound originally started in 1984 to help get kids out of crowded hotel shelters and let them spend time in a quiet oasis in Southfields, New York, a verdant area surrounded by trees and rolling hills just west of the Thruway in Orange County.

McEntarfer said the camp has since become more intentional about teaching children how to build self-esteem, cope with stress and learn how to resolve conflict, which can help them when they return home.

“Maybe they can go back a little stronger to deal with whatever they're having to deal with back home,” she said.

It helps that all the children know what it’s like to live in shelter and are freed from the stigma that's too often attached to being homeless in the city, McEntarfer added. “They don't want the other kids in their class to know that they're living in a shelter," she said. "Sometimes they don't have as many clothes as others because they literally move with a garbage bag from one shelter to the other when they move around. Not being able to take friends home, the things that we take for granted."

At the camp, staff make sure all the children have bathing suits, sneakers or donated clothes that are new, so that they can all participate in daily activities. “They don't have to worry about any stereotypes here,” McEntarfer said.

During the first session earlier this month, children boasted about learning how to ride a bike in two days, the vanilla-scented water lilies they picked while boating, and learning to play the guitar and cook pizza and pancakes. Many spoke Spanish and talked about learning how to swim for the first time as well as enjoying their first time at a sleep-away camp.

Prince Duke, 13, was in a cooking class, trying to make a tomato sauce, so that he could cook at home for his family.

“You can learn to be who you are and to be like truly yourself," he said. "Camp Homeward Bound is a magical place to come to — the people and, look, everywhere is just like green, which is beautiful. Camp made me feel centered and like joyful.”

Michael Clement, 20, is a counselor for older boys at the camp. He started off as a camper himself when he was 8 years old.

Clement said he left early during his first year because he was homesick. Having lived in city shelters for four years, he said he knows what the kids he looks after are feeling and how to make them comfortable, including by making sure his bunk knows the day’s schedule.

“To sort of take away that feeling of being unaware of what's going on,” he said. “The last thing you want to think as a child is, ‘What's going to happen to me or what's going on?’ You like to be informed.”

Clement said going to camp when he was homeless also gave him something to brag about at school.

“I had photo proof, things like that, when I was a child," he said. "They give out these jerseys as kind of like an emblem to show that you were here and you did your thing, you had your fun and now that's something that you can share amongst your friends."

JC Martinez, 11, has been coming to camp for the last few years and says he plans to return every year and then train to become a counselor.

“I'm gonna miss my friends. I don't want to go back home because it's gonna be another year to come back over here,” he said. “I don't want to wait all that year to come back.”