Booker Center's Summer Day Camp winds down with 175 kids learning, having fun for seven weeks

Summer day campers built, painted, and sold oversized doghouses as part of their 7-week character-building camp.

Some 175 youth have had a full summer during their 7-week Summer Day Camp held at the Reese Booker Youth Center.

"This has been our 10th year of operating a summer day camp in Wilkes County," said Carolyn Reynolds of the Wilkes County Community Partnership. "Children arrive at 11:30 on a bus provided by the Partnership, eat a nutritious meal at no cost to the children or families, then participate in supervised indoor or outdoor activities including swimming, arts and crafts, and field day activities. This has been an incredible camp with a part-time staff of 20."

Some of the campers' time was filled with special activities led by Mike Bright of PurePotential which emphasize character building and life skills development.

The youth constructed 10 doghouses to sell at the end of camp on Friday. In arts and crafts, youth designed a quilt and learned how to put it together. Dancers enacted a drama with a message of "saying NO to drugs," and encouraging youth to develop resistance skills to peer and societal pressures concerning risky behaviors.

Dancers at the Summer Day Camp enacted a drama with a message of saying "No" to drugs and wrong choices.

"And finally, judges come each week to taste the delicious foods cooked on outdoor cookers by three participating youth groups," Reynolds said. The overall winners will each take home a Weber grill and also will have learned many important principles of cooking.

The Summer Day Camp is a project of the Wilkes County Community partnership and is funded through grants from Region 2 MHDDAD Substance Abuse Prevention and a Juvenile Justice Prevention grant.

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