Regroup therapy for kids

High up in the San Gabriel Mountains, Alma Castaneda sits on a stone wall outside the small chapel at Camp Mariastella, her feet brushing piles of pine needles as she gazes at the woods around her. She’s come a long way from the unrest in her homeland of El Salvador, where her father served as a captain in the military, then died in a car crash when she was 5.

After she moved to Los Angeles at age 10 with her mother, younger brother and twin sister, Alma attended the all-girls summer camp the next year, unable to speak any English and terrified of being away from home. At camp, Alma slept outside under the stars, hiked to a small waterfall of runoff from the melting snow and saw a snake for the first time. She’s been coming back every year since.

Now a freshman in high school, Alma said the camp helps her escape some of the harsher realities of her crowded Montebello school, where students can leave their babies at day care on campus and fights have erupted between racial groups.

“When I come here, everything is all calm and I can think about what I can change when I go back to the city,” she said with a shy smile. “Before, I was really quiet and wouldn’t talk. Now, I say what I think and express my ideas and opinions.”

Alma is one of thousands of underprivileged or disabled children who have gone to summer camp through the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign, which launches its 51st year today.

For as long as she can remember, Alma has dreamed of becoming a nurse, making nurse’s hats out of paper when she was younger. But she credits Camp Mariastella with giving her the courage to pursue her dreams vigorously. Recently, Alma was crowned Miss Monterey Park.

“So many of the girls don’t have stable homes, they’re confused and are trying to find direction,” said leadership counselor Rosanna Castaneda, 21 (no relation to Alma), of the 120 girls that attend the camp each summer. “As a counselor, you see the physical changes -- watching them change from little girls when they start dyeing their hair and wearing makeup -- but you also see them become more responsible and observant. Some of them even brought their homework up here to catch up on school.”

This summer, more than 12,000 children selected by 70 nonprofit organizations will go to camp as a result of the campaign’s most successful fundraising effort ever, which raised $2.1 million last year.

Each family, including Castaneda’s, contributes some money toward the camp fee, which is $240 for Camp Mariastella. The Times fund contributes $175 per camper this summer and will increase the amount to $225 next summer.

Going to camp is unique because it teaches kids critical thinking and life skills while allowing them to be physically active, said Michael Brandwein, a former camp administrator who has written three books on the camp experience.

“Camp is an essential part of a young person’s education, but the curriculum is not facts and dates and formulas -- but how to develop good relationships, communicate and work with others,” he said. “It develops leadership skills in a way that watching a PowerPoint presentation in class can’t do.”

Children also benefit from an environment that encourages experimentation in different activities without “tracking” kids with grades or a permanent record.

“There’s huge pressure on children to meet academic standards with enormous consequences if you don’t pass,” he said. “People often have low expectations of kids with a terminal illness or those that come from impoverished backgrounds, and one of the things about kids is that we tend to get what we expect of them. At camp, you have no prior record and staff are trained to have high expectations.”

Francene Lifson, executive director of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, said $15,000 it received from the Times campaign has made it possible for her organization to send 90 children to Camp Yolijwa in Yucaipa for a week this summer, easing the burden as private donations to the foundation have dried up in recent years.

To choose children who will attend the camp, a team of doctors and staff members look at the number of emergency room visits and school absences the children have had because of their asthma, and they try to admit the children with the most serious cases to teach them how to manage their illness.

Many of the families Lifson works with struggle to provide asthma medication for their children. She recalls one mother who said her resources were stretched so thin that her four children shared one inhaler.

“It’s a real sad, sad situation,” Lifson said. “Many of these families are on welfare and food stamps, and the children don’t always get three square meals at home. The camp is so important to these children because we can give them a week of clean air to breathe and the camaraderie with the other campers and they get asthma education every day so they can manage it alone after the camp is over.”

Since 1954, The Times has raised more than $29 million and helped to send nearly 390,000 children to camp from five Southern California counties.

The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.2 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar raised from now through Labor Day.

Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make donations by credit card, visit www.latimes.com/summercamp. To send checks, use the attached coupon. Do not send cash.

Unless a donor requests otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.