Wildflower provides the gift of summer camp and enrichment opportunities to children who have lost a parent. Our unique program provides individually tailored support for grieving families. Wildflower provides emotional and logistical support to the surviving parent, and the opportunity for at-risk children to receive the incredible experiences that summer camp brings.
Our Family Liaison Team is a keystone of our program. Each family is paired with a family liaison, a trained human services professional, who works with the parent and his/her children by lending a listening ear, helping them find best-fit camps for their children, and providing referrals to grief programs and other resources when needed.
Wildflower’s program of placing grieving children in a supportive camp community, surrounded by mentors and counselors and opportunities to master new skills, facilitates healing and increases their resilience. In addition, Wildflower provides the advocacy, camp tuition negotiation and the financial support to make camp and enrichment opportunities a possibility to help families rebuild their lives after loss.
We strive to place our children in the best-fit camp for each child, with their interests and the needs of the entire family in mind. We place our campers in traditional day or overnight, specialty (e.g., sports/arts/travel) and/or bereavement camps close to home, throughout the Northeast, across the U.S., and internationally.
Camp and Beyond
Once a child becomes a Wildflower camper, we support them for as long as our assistance is needed, up to age 18. The Family Liaison partners with the family throughout their healing journey. This long-term commitment is a key component of our mission. Families benefit from our continued support long after the immediate support from family and friends starts to fade.
Even as our Wildflower teens move beyond their camping years, we continue to support them through our college planning program, developed to assist families and teens as they begin to navigate the admissions process. We have partnered with college counseling organizations to provide workshops for teens and parents regarding the application process and financial aid. When needed, Wildflower staff work with our partners to provide individualized college planning services at a reduced cost.
We also offer opportunities during the year for campers and their parents to meet one another, and a chance to find kinship and fun with others who understand what their family is going through.