Happiness Is Camping Offers Child Cancer Patients Normalcy [AUDIO]

For over 30 years, the Northwest Jersey charity has offered the chance for area youngsters to have the same summer camp experience as every other kid their age.

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The program was started by Murray Struver, and is now overseen by his son, Kurt, who serves as Executive Director of Happiness Is Camping. The yearly camp is open to all cancer patients and survivors, as well as their siblings.

"As long as your doctor says you are well enough to come to camp, we are happy to take you."

For 4 weekly sessions each summer, the camp hosts anywhere from 60 to 80 boys and girls, between the ages of 6 and 15. Sometimes attendance for a week even reaches 100 kids. This process takes place each week, while participants are allowed to stay for as many of the weekly sessions as they'd like.

The 140 acre camp, located in the Hardwick/Blairstown area, boasts amenities and activities ranging from fishing, boating, wildlife, swimming, a gym, fields, arts and crafts, and cooking.

"Anything that could possibly go on at a sleep-away camp, we have available for our kids," Struver says.

It's all part of the camp's mantra to make these children suffering through illness to have the opportunity to just have a little normalcy.

"We try to be a camp for kids," he explained, "We try not to dwell or even think about the fact that the kids have cancer when they are at camp."

Struver says that the mission is for each child to leave saying it was the best week of their lives.

"If we can accommodate hundreds of kids with cancer every summer and create that kind of experience for them, we've done our job."

On top of the slew of recreation and activities provided by Happiness Is Camping, it also features a fully equipped health center with an oncologist and two nurses always on duty and the capabilities for chemo treatments. While all of these features and amenities are essential to the charity's success, they do not come cheap.

"It's now about two thousand dollar a week for each child that comes to camp, and so we have to work hard at fundraising."

Happiness Is Camping charges no money to families for the week or more of camping, and relies on a sturdy network of donors and fundraisers held for them to make ends meet.

You can learn more about this wonderful program, and how you can help by visiting the Happiness Is Camping website and their Facebook page.

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