2023 Spring Family Camp Welcome Packet

Lydia C. Bryant
Department of Public Health: Georgia College & State University
KINS 4306: Internship
Dr. Ernie Kaninjing
April 23, 2023
 For my project, I created a welcome packet for the families attending Camp Kudzu’s

2023 Spring Family Camp session. I chose to make Camp Kudzu’s Family Camp session the

focus of my capstone project for several reasons, and the first among them had to do with timing.

Spring Family Camp is at the end of April, during the weekend of the 28th. By planning to have

my project center on this weekend camp session, as opposed to either Teen or Junior Retreat, I

gave myself much more time to get my project completed. The second reason was because I was

much more familiar with Family Camp than the other two sessions that took place during my

tenure as an intern at Camp Kudzu, and thus I was able to use that to my advantage. Finally,

while I had always intended to give back to Camp Kudzu with my project in some way, I was

simply drawn to the idea of creating something for Family Camp in particular.

My younger brother, Alexander Bryant, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in

November of 2007. The next year, in 2008, my family attended Camp Kudzu’s spring and fall

camp sessions. Going to those camp sessions really helped all of us, albeit in different ways, and

allowed me to have fond memories associated with diabetes. It was these experiences—these

feelings—that made me want to intern with Camp Kudzu in the first place, and I was determined

to pay them forward.

Even though I began working on my project almost immediately, I still spent a lot of time

in the brainstorming phase. While I knew that I wanted to do something for Family Camp, I still

had so many unanswered questions. Did I want to focus on the whole family? Just the parents?

Maybe create a program for the siblings? After a few weeks of researching and thinking about it,

as well as bouncing ideas back and forth with Anna Rambo, my supervisor, I decided to create a

resource manual. However, it wouldn’t be until after attending Teen Retreat, and seeing how

much Camp Kudzu meant to its community, that I really got my inspiration.
 My inspiration took the form of a new idea for how to format the resource manual, which

would now be a welcome packet instead. In the new format, the welcome packet would be

divided into two sections: “What Is Camp Kudzu?” and “Why Camp Kudzu Matters”. One of the

biggest realizations that I had had while at Teen Retreat, in addition to how much it meant to

campers, was just how reluctant some of the parents were about sending their children to

overnight camp for the first time. This is completely understandable given the circumstances, but

when paired with the reactions I witnessed from campers, I realized that there was a very real

risk that some kids with T1D wouldn’t get a chance to find a community where they were

understood and where they could make life-long bonds of friendship.

In the new welcome packet format, the first section was made up of information about

Camp Kudzu in general—including the story of how the organization was founded, its mission,

vision statements, its goal, and a timeline—the organization’s staff, and information about the

various camp programs and events. For this section, I gathered most of the information from the

Camp Kudzu website, because it was already available in an informative, easy to digest format.

The second section required a little more involvement, however, and for that reason I

started on it first. Since I was inspired by hearing about actual experiences from campers, I

figured that the best way to show that Camp Kudzu is important was to get actual testimonials

and put them in my welcome packet. To start with, I had to decide who I wanted to get testimony

from. I ultimately decided on campers, volunteers, and parents since they would provide a well-

rounded look at Camp Kudzu. After I had decided on that, I had to create questions for each

group. I created a series of five open-ended questions per group, uploaded them to a google doc

survey, and sent it to Anna, along with an introduction letter I’d written up explaining who I was,

what my survey was for, and why I was asking for people to complete it. Since Anna is the
Director of Programs at Camp Kudzu, she is responsible for camper admissions and hiring

volunteer staff, which made her extremely helpful when it came to finding participants for my

survey. In the email I gave respondents one month to complete the survey. We sent out another

email as a reminder when there was only one week left before the deadline. Unfortunately, there

weren’t as many respondents as I had initially hoped, but the respondents I did have provided

excellent testimonials.

I have learned a lot from this project. In some ways it was similar to what I had to do for

some of my public health courses, such as how I had to create a survey both for this as well as

for Methods of Research Planning. Yet in other ways it was very different. Whereas the

parameters of a classroom project don’t expand more than halfway through, with the creation of

the welcome packet I had to go back and edit and expand it in real time in order to reflect new

programs and staff in the Camp Kudzu organization. I realize that this happens regularly outside

of the classroom setting, and is just a part of life, but it was extremely daunting to deal with at

times.

Despite all this, I am very proud of what I have accomplished. Not only is this easily the

biggest project I’ve ever undertaken before, encompassing multiple parts of Public Health, but it

has allowed me to increase my understanding of programming software like Canva, nonprofit

organizations in general, and Type 1 Diabetes as a whole. I will be forever grateful for how this

experience has allowed me to grow, both professionally and personally.