Piloted in July 2009, NHCC’s New Hope Summer Camp, Camp Lotus, hosts children from NHCC’s provincial Outreach Program as participants for a one-week educational summer camp.

Many of Outreach’s 1440 children often reside with their extended families, and have little knowledge of their disease and the precautions they must take in their future lives. For this reason, participants in NHCC’s ‘Camp Lotus’ program spend one week with trained counselors, learning about the nature of their disease and “learning how to handle stigma and discrimination  as well as learning how to maintain their health and become advocates for other HIV-positive children within their rural communities.

Additionally, the children participate in traditional ‘summer camp’ team-building and creative activities such as arts, craft and drama exercises, a final dramatic performance, and sport and recreation activities, in order to give them an opportunity to express themselves socially, and allow them to return to their rural homes with newfound confidence, and a better understanding of their disease. In doing so, the program aims to build strong support networks among children living with HIV/AIDS, as well as providing these children, who may be somewhat socially ostracized in their local schools, with a chance to have fun in a safe and secure environment.

Four camps are conducted each year during the July-August public school holidays, with approximately 160 children attending annually.