DISABLED CHILDREN – What comes to your mind’s eye?  wheelchairs? prosthetic limbs? scars? hard of hearing? poor hand-eye coordination?  need for an organ transplant? short attention spans?

That’s NOT what we see.  We see opportunities to be had, challenges being met, friendships being formed, caring being done, needs being met, acceptance, accommodation, confidence, and childhood joy being experienced. 

Eighteen years ago, our son, Jeffrey, became DISABELED due to no fault of his own:  nothing connected to birth, no accident, no crazy behavior, nothing he had control over.  What happened?  An unknown virus entered his body and, within hours, destroyed 80% of his heart’s function.  The result?  He was thoroughly evaluated and it was determined that he needed a heart transplant.  He lived with this DISABILITY for three years, but lost the battle with his body and passed away.

Our family had a desperate need to make meaning out of our loss.  So what did we do?  Without any experience, any money or any network, we set up the Jeffrey Campbell Evans Foundation.  Our mission was to provide temporary housing to transplant patients and their caregivers in the form of two-bedroom, two-bathroom, first floor apartments, at little or no cost to them.  We did this for eight years and opened eight apartments And amazingly, we served 225 transplant families.  However, due to rising costs of rents, utilities, insurance (you get it), we were forced to close our apartments.  This was a huge loss to the transplant community.

So now where do we go?  What do we do?  How do we do it?  This is where Camp Twin Lakes comes into the picture.  This is a year-long camp for DISABLED CHILDREN to attend, which is completely adapted to their needs.

What you see at this camp are smiles, laughter, friendships, acceptance, swimming, boating, canoeing, zip-lining, crafting, good food, music, farming (yes, they grow their own vegetables!), singing, dancing, archery, horse-back riding, tending to goats. And, of course, this camp provides fully adaptive, medically supportive, and deeply impactful camp experiences to more than 10,000 of Georgia’s children and young adults each year.