Many of you probably saw this article on the front page of last Monday’s New York Times. It’s great to see any story about Asperger’s getting such prominent real estate in “The Gray Lady”. This one in particular brings attention to a important topic: young adults with Asperger’s (or NLD or any others on the “high-functioning” end of the autism spectrum) navigating romantic relationships.

So much of what we do at Camp Akeela is to help our campers develop and practice appropriate social skills. For many of our kids, Akeela is the one place in their lives where they feel truly accepted by their peers, which allows them to form uniquely meaningful friendships and connections to others. When we first started the camp in 2008, our oldest campers were 16 years old – completing 9th grade. The following summer, we had so much demand for teenagers that we expanded the program to include boys and girls finishing 10th grade. We’ve found that camp has taken on even more significance in the lives of our campers as they move through adolescence and the world gets even more complicated socially.

It quickly became evident to us that we could do even more to help prepare these amazing kids for adulthood. Towards that end, we started a new program last summer, called Beyond Akeela. It’s for boys and girls finishing 11th and 12th grades and is essentially a hybrid of a traditional camp CIT program and a life-skills training experience. We had 18 participants in Beyond Akeela’s inaugural summer and it was a huge success. In addition to having an amazing summer at camp, they also came away with concrete skills and experience in the areas of job readiness, managing money, cooking & nutrition, college options and appropriate peer relationships. They toured colleges, attended cooking and banking classes, volunteered in a variety of community service efforts, organized and led in-camp activities, discussed relationships and sexuality, went shopping and did their own laundry, challenged themselves on outdoor adventure trips, and much more. The program culminated in a 4-day trip on which they put all their newfound skills to work while living independently (with staff supervision!) in condominiums.

Overall, it was a huge success and a program we look forward to offering for many years to come. Reading the New York Times article last week allowed us to reflect on and be thankful for the role we may play in helping a very deserving group of people find what we all seek in life: loving, fulfilling and reciprocal relationships with people who value and respect us.

— Eric