Yesterday, EJ, Emily, Nick, Andy K, Sean C, and I completed the 20th anniversary year of the Kids Kayaking Camp. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centers had inspired my original idea to start the camp for underserved inner city youth in NYC. In 2002, we did the first the camp with Boys and Girls Harbor’s Upward Bound Program in lower Harlem. When the Harbor’s Upward Bound program closed down, we were asked to bring the kayak camp to the Graham Windham School in Yonkers, NY where we ran the camp until COVID sadly closed that program permanently. After that happened, I wrote a post for the JK website about the program closing and how much we wanted to continue the camp.

Sean Coffey, a teacher for 36 years at a NY school nearby, St. Christopher/ Jennie Clarkson childcare agency and a longtime kayaker, answered the blog post giving us hope for a new camp! Sean is an extremely rare combination of teacher of kids with special learning, emotional, and psychological needs and kayaker who has dedicated his life to making the lives of his students better and more fun. He connected us to the Green Chimneys School in Brewster, NY which is an amazing and inspiring place! The founder, Dr. Ross, was a visionary to create such a beautiful and fun environment for kids to learn and be in 75 years ago. Today, Green Chimneys accommodates a variety of students who do not fit into traditional school and have no-where to go.

It has a big focus on using animal therapy and nature to teach and help kids, which allows the kayaking camp to easily integrate into their curriculum.
This is our second year doing the camp with Green Chimneys, and we were happy to see returning students, Adam, Conner, and Brendan (many of last year’s students had graduated), along with new students, Luke, Finn, Alex, JV and, Emrod, including two teachers, Michelle and Jamie. It was great to see returning faces and meet new ones. We also had the opposite problem from last year, that is very low water this year – last year the water was epically high! Sean suggested a section of the Delaware I had never been to but had heard of, and after our reccie mission to check it out, I was very happy to see that there was at least one river in the area with decent water levels despite the drought. As it turns out, the section is beautiful and perfect for beginning kayakers – we really lucked out! The Housatonic also surprised me because at least part of it was paddlable to a very low level – something I never would have imagined. Not only that, it was really fun!

DCIM102GOPROGOPR8763.JPG

The weather was really hot so being in the water – paddling, swimming, floating – was the best place to be and it was great to get the students comfortable being in the river. All of the kids and teachers learned fast and progressed very quickly. As we had excellent student teacher ratios, all of the students got lots of one on one instruction, which really helps expedite the learning process. From the teaching point of view, it’s a lot more fun for the instructors too!

DCIM102GOPROG0149481.JPG

We had a really terrific week! The students had fun, were challenged, learned something new and in Emrod’s case, declared “I want to do this for the rest of my life!” Thank you to everyone who makes this camp possible!! Hard to believe that many of our boats, paddles and helmets and life jackets are still from our original gear donations which is a testament to how great the gear is – thank you AT, Astral, Jackson Kayak, and Shred Ready!!!! And thank you to everyone who keeps the inspiration going, shares their love of paddling and the desire to make the world a better place through kayaking!

DCIM102GOPROG0119083.JPG