Alliance facilitates expanded services for local Dream Camp families and their children
PHILADELPHIA, March 12, 2013– ESF Dream Camp Foundation today announced a partnership with Cradles to Crayons that will enable it to expand the services it offers local Dream Camp families and their children.
Dream Camp provides underserved children with after-school, mentoring and summer programs at Girard College in Philadelphia (and at Trinity College in Hartford, CT).
Cradles to Crayons, the West Conshohocken-based nonprofit, will provide everyday essentials, including clothing, shoes, coats, toys, books, school supplies and infant safety equipment, to Dream Camp families in-need, free of charge.
“We are very excited to embark on this partnership,” said Michael Rouse, ESF Dream Camp Foundation co-founder, “with such a remarkable and generous organization.” Michael Rouse said, “Our Philadelphia-area Dream Camp families are already taking advantage of the Cradles to Crayons program.”
The ESF Dream Camp Foundation is supported by generous individual donors, foundations, and by Bryn Mawr-based ESF Summer Camps, a 31-year-old company that provides award-winning summer camps and specialty programs for children between the ages of 3-15 at Haverford School (Haverford), Episcopal Academy (Newtown Square), Montgomery School (Chester Springs), Rosemont College (Rosemont), Norwood Fontbonne Academy (Chestnut Hill), The Philadelphia Phillies, and Major League Soccer’s Philadelphia Union.
Dream Camp conducts a year-round program for the area’s underserved children – an After-School Academy Program and a Summer Program – in addition to a series of Family Services and Workshops.
“We are so proud to be working with the ESF Dream Camp Foundation,” said Michal Smith, Cradles to Crayons executive director. ”It provides such wonderful services to children in-need throughout the southeastern Pennsylvania area, which we will be able to complement with our KidPacks and backpacks that provide age- and gender-specific supplies of everyday essentials and school supplies year-round.”
Dream Camp families that want to participate in the program with Cradles to Crayons pass along their needs to the ESF Dream Camp Foundation staff, who coordinate the order placement and pick-up from Cradles to Crayons’ Giving Factory in West Conshohocken, and then deliver the items to Girard College in North Philadelphia, where Dream Camp families pick up the items.
Cradles to Crayons, which addresses the poverty faced by one in five children in the five-county southeastern Pennsylvania area has served more than 100,000 disadvantaged youngsters, birth to age 12, since its establishment here in 2007.