About three dozen youth from the area are participating this weekend in Camp Erin, an overnight grief camp for youth ages 6-17. The regional camp is hosted by Hospice of Western Kentucky, and organizers said the impact reaches beyond just the campers.
Camp Erin is one of the programs created by the Eluna Network, a nationwide bereavement program. According to the Camp Erin site, it’s a “transformational weekend camp that combines traditional, fun camp activities with grief education and emotional support,” and it “provides a unique opportunity for youth to increase levels of hope, enhance self-esteem, and especially to learn that they are not alone.”
Hospice Bereavement Coordinator Caleb Potter said theirs is the first organization in Kentucky that has been selected to host Camp Erin. Potter said the first year was a success, and he’s excited for it to return this weekend.
“The camp was phenomenal. I kind of gauge the success by how many volunteers were willing to sign up for this year. We have an amazing retention rate of volunteers, and we’ve added quite a few to the mix. We got really good feedback from the campers and their parents or caregivers,” he said.
The camp will again be held at the Gasper River Catholic Youth Camp & Retreat Center in Bowling Green.
Potter said while there will be trained professionals leading some discussions and providing education, one of the biggest benefits of the camp is letting the youth share their experiences with one another and understand they are not alone.
“It’s more about peer-to-peer support, so kids just being around other kids that have lost a loved one and are trying to navigate those waters,” he said. “There is a therapeutic element of it. We do have a lot of mental health professionals volunteering for the camp that will be helping the kids, but more than anything it’s about the kids just being able to be around and talk openly with one another and be very transparent about what they’re going through.”
When Eluna first selected Hospice to host the camp, Potter thought it was only funded for the first 3 years. He said he later learned as long as the camp is deemed successful, Eluna would fund it “indefinitely.”
“I am through-the-roof excited because it just seems to be such a helpful resource for kids,” Potter said. “It seems like it’s something that adults are really benefiting from too. We grieve kind of vicariously through one another, and so a lot of these adults that are volunteering had losses of their own when they were children. Now to be able to help our community’s children grieve well is really helpful to them, too, and beneficial for them. I would argue that same case for me. It means the world to me that we’re going to be able to do this for the foreseeable future.”
