“The hospitals saved my son’s life, but Special Love saved his soul.”
Special Love provides a strong, nurturing environment for children with cancer and their families through its free camps and getaway weekends, emergency financial assistance, virtual programs, and educational scholarships for young adults who have beaten cancer and now want to move on with their lives.
Camp Fantastic, our cornerstone program for 7-17 year-old cancer patients, is considered a protocol within the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and has made Special Love a recognized National Institutes of Health (NIH) charity.
Since our inception in 1983, children have come to Special Love from the Washington metropolitan area and from all across the country thanks to our partnership with the NIH and other area hospitals.
Each year, Special Love serves hundreds of children, teens, and young adults ages birth to 30 years old and their families.
To read more information about our latest programs and events click here.
Cancer knows no boundaries. For more than three decades, Special Love has helped children with cancer to “just be kids,” through camps, emergency financial assistance, college scholarships – and, most important, a community of support that assures these struggling families they are not alone in their battle.
Started in 1983, Camp Fantastic is Special Love’s hallmark program, offering a week-long camp adventure. The magic of Camp Fantastic is described best by one young camper … Camp made everything bad feel good again.
Our hallmark program is a week-long adventure for 7-17 patients and survivors who are within 5 years of treatment (or within 7 years of a bone marrow transplant). Medical care is provided on-site so campers can focus on fun – a ropes course, canoeing, swimming, cooking, sports, and more! Teens have exclusive lodging and programming and 16 and 17-year-olds can participate in our LIT (leaders in training) group.
While the details for camp and our precautionary COVID measures are still evolving, we’re proceeding under the belief that camp in some form will definitely happen.
All cancer patients ages 7-17 within 5 years of treatment (or within 7 years of a bone marrow transplant) are eligible.
Camp Fantastic Applications are available here.
It is a fun-filled week of swimming, canoeing, horseback riding, marshmallow roasting, campfire singing, pillow fighting – everything a child without cancer enjoys at a traditional camp. For a child with cancer, the experience is, well, liberating.
The adventures these special children discover at camp is therapeutic in so many ways. By the end of the week of Camp Fantastic, the once timid troupe of pediatric cancer patients has built a bond as strong as any these kids will ever experience.
I work with children who have cancer every day.
I’m always saying, ‘No, you can’t do that.’
That’s why I love helping at Camp Fantastic
because it’s the one week
I get to say ‘Yes’ to these kids.
Yes, have some ice cream.
Yes, play soccer.
Yes, stay up a little late for the dance.
Pediatric Oncology Nurse at Camp
158 Fort Royal Pike, Suite 301
Winchester, Virginia 22602
888-930-2707
specialove.org
[email protected]
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