The Green Valley Alliance Church recently hosted a free week-long day camp for kids ages 4-11.
This is the church’s fifth year running the camp (apart from skipping last year due to heightened risk of COVID-19 pandemic) and this year the church hosted an Olympic-themed camp called Torchbearers.
“The moment we launched this, everyone pulled together to make it work,” explained Janina Espino Pozo, camp coordinator and wife of Pastor Juan Espino who runs both the Green Valley Alliance Church and the Iglesia Hispana del Nazareno Bradford under the same roof, offering bilingual services in English and Spanish.
Janina says she spent three months preparing and organizing for the camp and worked alongside the Simcoe-Muskoka District Health Unit through every step of planning.
“We were informed of the protocols and made sure to enforce them,” she asserts, adding she has a friend who works with the health board who helped her with inspections and guidelines.
The church had approximately 40 volunteer staff - mostly youth who were off from school during summer break - to help run the camp. And without much advertisement, the camp welcomed 53 children.
“Our vision with our day camp is to give kids a fun summer week while mommy and daddy get a break,” she explains. “When you are a lower income family and can’t afford the other day camps in town… parents are so grateful! One mom told me she has four kids under 12, so it would be impossible for her to afford a day camp – her kids had a blast at our camp.”
Crafts, music, sports, and dance were just some of the activities the kids engaged in during the five-day camp. The camp included the annual food bank challenge, initiated by the camp volunteers, in which the teams competed to see who could bring in the most canned food items for the food bank. The winning team got to select a camp volunteer to get ‘slimed’.
“It’s crazy how competitive it gets,” she said with a laugh. “The kids are emptying their parents' pantries and dragging them to the grocery stores for extra food.”
Unpredictably, there was a tie this year between the Yellow ‘Sparks’ (ages 6-7) and the Green ‘Giants’ (ages 8-9), each group bringing in 151 cans. In total, the church camp collected over 442 canned goods for the Bradford Helping Hand Food Bank.
“I had Carolyn Khan (President of the Helping Hand Food Bank) come and explain to the kids why it’s important that we donate to the food bank and how it will make a different for our community,” explained Janina. “August is a month no one donates because everyone is all away. It’s a crucial month because it’s also back to school and moms need to stock their pantries with snacks and food for lunches.”
The two winning teams got to select two youth volunteers to get ‘slimed’ using a custom-made wooden structure where buckets of slime could be dumped from – and unfortunately for youth helpers Diego and Esdras, their week ended with slime poured all over their heads.
“There is a rule, you can’t get slimed twice,” Janina quipped.
The church’s camp was once again sponsored with food donations from Peter Reali’s No Frills in Bradford, and monetary donations from realtor Wilson Verduga with Re/Max, and The Casallas Tigrero Real Estate Group.
“I always just tell people to send whatever they feel is in their heart,” she expresses. “Whatever they feel they want to give, and the extra costs the church covers. Everyone pulls through between both churches – it’s effortless once people see the initiative, they just trust to give and the young kids have such a fun time.”
Green Valley Alliance Church is located at 758 Simcoe Rd. with English services Sundays at 10 a.m. and Spanish services at 1 p.m.
“We have a lot of mixed couples, so translating the sermons for our interracial couples is a need,” she says.
The church has in-person and online, live-streams. To stay up-to-date with the church’s events, visit: www.gvachurch.com (English) www.ihnb.ca (Spanish Church of the Nazarene)
