Kidz2Leaders: Camp Hope

Every summer, kids arrive at Camp Hope carrying a heavy burden: a parent behind bars along with all the confusion and loneliness that can come with it. 

More than 200,000 children in Georgia are growing up this way, and for Kidz2Leaders, Camp Hope is the first step in a multi-year journey of walking beside these kids. Thanks in part to your generosity through the Be Rich campaign, that process begins at camp with just twelve staff members and a small army of volunteers.

Nearly everyone who shows up to cook meals, lead games, and counsel a cabin is a volunteer—and they're what makes Camp Hope so special.

As one staff member put it: “Money can fund a meal or a cabin. But it's the volunteers who turn the program into a relationship.” Because money can't sit up late with a child who misses home. It can't take a walk with a struggling camper and gently point them toward Christ. That kind of patience and presence is what volunteers give—the part no dollar amount can buy.

That serving spirit shows up across every age of volunteer, including the teenage volunteers. Kids at camp range from eight to eighteen, and having a counselor who isn't that much older gives them something rare—someone who can be like an older sibling, who brings energy and fun, who gets down in the dirt and games right alongside them.

Colton, one of those teenage volunteers, comes from right here at East Cobb Church.

Teens like Colton help campers feel seen and understood, and they model healthy friendships simply by how they show up. For campers who've had few models of that in their own lives, watching someone close to their age choose to serve them is its own quiet kind of teaching. 

It also helps the adult volunteers. Kids often open up to someone nearer their own age in a way they can't with an adult, no matter how loving. So when a teenager like Colton steps in, he's helping the whole team reach the campers.

And service here doesn't move in only one direction. Volunteers and teens arrive expecting to give, but often leave having received more than they brought. Whole student ministries have come for a week planning to serve, only to leave changed themselves.

The story repeats itself again and again: “I thought I'd come and make a difference. I left different myself.”

Twenty-six years in, that's still the engine behind Camp Hope. It’s not just curriculum or funding—which through Be Rich you have been a huge part of—but people of every age, willing to show up and serve. Kids who came to camp at eight are now grown lawyers, board members, and parents of their own families, living proof that someone's willingness to serve them once can continue to encourage them the rest of the way.