A place for bunts and breathing room
When Cynthia Davila shuts her eyes tight and imagines the week she’ll spend at Camp Whittier this summer, her voice fills with giddiness, and she speed-talks.
“I think we’re going to sleep in a tent and in a sleeping bag, and there might be bears in the woods,” she says eagerly.
“I’m really excited. I can’t wait, and I’m going to try new things.”
Cynthia, 10, is no stranger to acclimating to unfamiliar environments. Her father was killed in a car accident when she was only a year old, forcing her and her mother to emigrate from Guatemala.
Cynthia’s mother, who left two older sons behind, gets by with a job taking care of another family’s children.
Camp Whittier, on 55 hilly acres of Los Padres National Forest, will provide a different environment from the one surrounding the fourth-grader’s Carson home.
Cynthia and her mother share a small apartment in a low-income neighborhood with a roommate who helps to pay the rent.
“Camp is important for kids because it takes them out of their normal environment and allows them to learn different life skills,” explains Julie Brown, manager of community development for Keep Youth Doing Something (KYDS), the organization sending Cynthia to camp. KYDS seeks to empower underprivileged youth.
“Not all of the kids who attend are low-income,” Brown says. “So they meet all kinds of people and get a taste of the way people lead different lifestyles. It’s great for relationship building.”
Cynthia was selected to attend the program by Brown and other administrators at KYDS, which sponsored an essay contest asking why each student wanted to go to camp.
“We read a lot of very touching stories,” says Brown. “Most kids say, ‘Mom can’t afford it’ or ‘I’d just like to get some fresh air.’ ”
“I wanted to go because it’s something I don’t get to do every day,” Cynthia says of her own desire to attend camp.
“And I want to do sports there, especially softball,” adds the athlete, who plays center field and second base. “I like doing bunts.”
Cynthia will show off her batting skills during her five days this summer at Camp Whittier, which hosts about 100 campers ages 6 to 13 and counselors-in-training ages 14 to 17 during each of its two sessions.
And though she is an avid student, Cynthia says that she’s looking forward to leaving her schoolwork behind for a while.
“I want to be a math teacher,” she says, “but it’ll be good to not have to do homework, even though I can finish 60 multiplication problems in, like, one minute.”
Keep Youth Doing Something is one of 60 organizations receiving financial support this year through the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign.
More than 8,000 underprivileged children will go to camp this summer, thanks to $1.5 million raised last year.
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 $1.1 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.
Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771.
To make donations by credit card, go to latimes.com/summercamp. To send checks, use the attached coupon.
Do not send cash. Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.
