While many 15 year-olds look forward to a summer full of beaches, amusement parks, and vacations trips, TECHS junior Jaydon Perkins decided to break the boredom of summer in a different way. He volunteered two weeks of his summer vacation as a “Buddy,” at Beloved and Beyond, a camp in Central Texas, that serves adults and children who have special needs.
On the word of a friend, Jaydon checked into the organization through his church, Cypress Valley Bible Church, in Marshall. “At first, I was scared. When I signed up, I thought I was going to be assigned ‘Be Crew,’ which meant I would be doing a lot of janitor work – cleaning cabins, serving food, scrubbing floors and toilets.” However, as Jaydon turned 16 during his June 22nd stay, he was made a “Be Buddy,” and thus became a “buddy” to two campers at the facility.
The camp assigns Be Buddy volunteers to two campers with special needs. Jaydon was assigned to Riley, a 20 year-old man with Downs Syndrome, and Jonathon, a 15 year-old teenager with autism. ‘Be Buddies,’ would act as companions to the special needs campers, staying “within arms length with them,” the entire time. This meant that ‘Buddies’ would be expected to do whatever their assigned camper wanted to do, and to not do anything their camper didn’t want to do. The Beloved and Beyond camp, located in Rosebud, Texas, offers camping, hiking, zip lining, horseback riding, swimming, dancing, arts and crafts, and even has a giant swing. “So if you are afraid of heights, and your buddy wasn’t, you’d still have to participate in the activity,” Jaydon explained.
Cypress Valley partnered with the camp and sent 15 volunteers to the camp. The cost of volunteering at the camp was $700, which the church helped to subsidize. Jaydon spent a week in June at the camp (his birthday week) and then came back again for the first week of August. When asked if he planned on volunteering again,
Jaydon enthusiastically continued.“I learned a lot! It changed the way I thought about people with special needs… I would definitely do it again!” Beloved and Beyond’s camp program runs from June to August. Anyone interested in volunteering, donating, or participating in the camp program can contact the organization at https://belovedandbeyond.org