What is SMA Camp?

It is many things: fun, adventure, hope. It is a forum for families to come together and share, and laugh, and cry and then laugh some more. It is a place where our children, living each day with SMA, became the majority; where siblings meet, connect, and form lifelong friendships that stretch across the miles. It is a wealth of information for the taking, networking, brainstorming and sharing what works and what doesn’t. For parents it is more than one could ever learn from any doctor or specialist. It is a place where families and children living with SMA show the world that just because life is different for us, doesn’t mean it’s unenjoyable, it’s just different.

Camp is a whirlwind of activities. For the kids, there are scavenger hunts, crafts, obstacle courses, relay races, amateur skit performances, swimming, etc. All of these activities are completely accessible, not to mention irresistible. For the adults, there is the pure joy of watching your child/children, either driving or running, without a glance back knowing that the world they were in at that very moment held no barriers for them. That the people surrounding them would not stare, or gawk, or point, and that should a dilemma arise, surrounding them was a wealth of knowledge and helping hands to make anything possible.

SMA Camp is a place where kids can be kids, chair or no chair, laughing and playing and helping one another. A family that attended a previous camp shared the following, “SMA Camp was an experience our family will never forget, as we honked our horn and drove away, our hearts remained, there in that open field, that place where the echoes of the laughter and tears and good times that we shared are frozen in time until we return again.”