SALEM, Va.—A 40-year-old camp providing summer activities for the developmentally disabled has been donated to HopeTree Family Services, which is exploring ways the 90-acre facility can enhance the agency’s own ministries to intellectually-disabled adults.
Dare to Care Charities, which has operated the camp near Blue Ridge, Va., transferred the property in early August to HopeTree, whose main campus in Salem, Va., is about 25 miles west. HopeTree is a Baptist General Association of Virginia-affiliated benevolent organization which provides residential, educational and support services to at-risk children and youth and to adults with developmental disabilities.
Camp Virginia Jaycee in Blue Ridge, Va., is about 25 miles from HopeTree's main campus in Salem, Va. (Photo courtesy of Dare to Care Charities)
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“We are honored Dare to Care Charities would make us this tremendously generous gift,” Stephen Richerson, president and executive director of HopeTree, said in a press release. “We also see this as a great opportunity to expand both our missions in ministering to a very deserving group of people.”
For years, HopeTree has provided staff for the camp’s summer activities and in 2008 built a group home for adults with developmental disabilities there—one of 17 it operates in locations across Virginia.
Mark Early, HopeTree’s director of communications, said already-scheduled retreats and activities at the camp will continue as planned but added his agency is examining additional opportunities—a view confirmed by Gerri Wade, HopeTree’s vice president for developmental disabilities ministry.
HopeTree built this group home on the groups of Camp Virginia Jaycee in 2008. (Photo courtesy of HopeTree)
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“We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds and we look at this as another opportunity to expand our ministry to serve those with intellectual disabilities,” Wade told the Roanoke Times.
Though the facility is known as Camp Virginia Jaycee, it’s been almost three years since that organization—a summer camping program for the developmentally disabled—has had a presence there. A dispute with Dare to Care Charities ended its relationship with the camp and, according to Camp Virginia Jaycee’s website, it has operated at Camp Bethel in Fincastle, Va., since 2010.
Both organizations may play a role in the Blue Ridge camp’s future, however, according to HopeTree’s press release, which said members of all three groups “have already begun careful deliberations on what future programs and opportunities may become available at that location to serve individuals with intellectual disabilities.”
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.