Infectious laughter, shouts and the chaos of unbridled play echo around the gym during a spirited game of Red Light, Green Light.
People ran in swarms, shrieking with excitement until given the order to stop. They had just finished a game of kickball, and had a slate of crafts, small-group games and finally a dance party to look forward to.
At Project Reach, a summer camp for people with special needs, every day is a chance to build friendship, be active and have a chance to let loose.
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“They come in with a huge smile on their face, and are always so excited,” said Brant McCracken, founder of Project Reach. “You’ll see hurtful things said about the special needs community all the time, and this just really shows parents that their student is loved, and that people care about them and want them to have normal everyday activities.”
Project Reach has become an annual tradition in Johnson County. Since it was founded three years ago by a trio of Center Grove High School graduates, the free summer camps have provided a weeklong opportunity for people in the special needs community to share a unique experience together.
More than 200 campers and volunteers have signed up for the camps since 2016. What started as a class project has grown to become the highlight of the year for people throughout the special needs community.
“We love doing stuff with Project Reach. They have been awesome to us, and have been a great, great team,” said Amanda Potter, a Project Reach camper from Greenwood.
McCracken was finishing up his junior year at Center Grove when he came up with the idea for Project Reach. As part of the Genius Hour in his English class, he had time to work independently and come up with a project that would benefit the community.
He had been working for weeks on his idea: A digital portal that connected musicians who offered lessons with potential students.
But one week before the project was due, McCracken changed his mind. He had gone to visit his grandparents over the weekend, and spent an entire day in their house.
While he was there, he noticed that his aunt, who has special needs stemming from an unknown condition, never once left her chair.
“She was sitting in a chair the whole time I was there. She wasn’t getting the exercise she needed,” he said. “So I wanted to do something to help people with special needs up and moving.”
McCracken approached his teacher, Lesley McDougal, and told her his plan. She was concerned that he was making a change to his project with so little time left before it was due, but allowed him to try.
“He completely did this on his own,” McDougal said. “It was something that he cared about, and they’ve sustained it all these years. They’ve changed so many lives.”
The vision for Project Reach was a half-day camp where people with special needs could play sports and games, do crafts and have fun, all while interacting with volunteers from the community. McCracken recruited his good friends, Elliott and fellow classmate Dustin Evans, to help put the details together.
He laid out his idea in a presentation to 50 classmates and Center Grove faculty members. To his surprise, people asked about how to sign up for the camp.
“At this point, it was just an idea. I wasn’t planning on following through with it, it was just to finish the project,” he said. “I didn’t have any ideas how to sign up for it, so that night, Ian, Dustin and I started putting it together.”
The three teens put together a sign-up document, worked out a date and location to hold the camp and partnered with Charlene’s Angels, a Greenwood-based adult day center, to put it on. They agreed to bring all of their students to the camp, with teachers available to lend a hand if volunteers need help.
For executive director Charlene Guthrie, the camp is an excellent opportunity for her students to try something new and forge new friendships.
“My students love it. They love the attention of these wonderful young people, and having one-on-one time. They look forward to the art activities and the physical activities, but more than anything, the camaraderie,” she said.
More challenging was recruiting volunteers to help with it. McCracken, Elliott and Evans leaned heavily on their classmates, putting posters up around school and convincing their friends to spend a week at their camp.
“Starting something new, it’s hard to find people who are as energetic about it as we are,” McCracken said. “The special needs community isn’t huge, and most people don’t understand what goes into have someone in your family with special needs, what it takes to get them up and going.”
The first camp was held in June 2016 at Independence Park, and drew 75 campers. Parents, campers and volunteers all raved about the impact that it had.
“We just have fun. It’s amazing experiences for us,” Potter said. “It means a lot that they have this.”
Since that initial camp, organizers put together two camps per summer each of the last two years. Organizers have made the registration process easier, with an online option that provides more information about participants, such as allergies and specific functional abilities, to better serve the campers.
Games with all of the campers, as well as smaller group activities, make up a bulk of each morning. Crafts and snacks are built into the day to keep people interested and stimulated.
“It’s a lot of the simple gym games that everyone loved playing in school. They’re so easy to learn and so much fun for them, and it gets them active,” Elliott said.
Participants are paired one-one-one with volunteers to help guide them through the day. Those relationships have often blossomed into lasting friendships.
“We try to keep the same people paired up every camp, because if someone developed a relationship with a volunteer last summer, we want to get them with that same person this summer so that friendship can continue to grow,” McCracken said.
Potter has been matched with Presley McGraw, who will be a senior at Center Grove High School, since the camp started. Though McGraw came into the camp unsure of what to expect, she soon fell in love with the positivity and friendships that she made.
She and Potter have started meeting up outside of camp to swim and do other activities throughout the year.
“It’s such a good experience to see how excited they get, the smile on their face. They’re always so happy. It’s changed my life seeing them,” McGraw said.
Helpers such as McGraw have experience working with special needs adults, but a constant wave of new volunteers have come to the camp in recent years as well.
This is the first year that Trevor Harrell has taken part in Project Reach. He wanted an opportunity to work more with the special needs community.
“It’s been awesome. I’d never done this before and didn’t know what to expect, but after the first day, it’s been a lot of fun,” he said.
Seth Bruner was in the same situation. Prior to coming to camp, Bruner had never really been around people with special needs. The experience has been so rewarding that he has changed his major at University of Indianapolis, from exercise science to elementary education.
“I had a change in my heart. I always wanted to be out and helping people,” he said. “You get in here, and the interactions you have are special.”
Project Reach organizers are in the process of getting their organization registered as a nonprofit agency, allowing for people to make tax-deductible donations to support the camp. Currently, McCracken and Elliott rely heavily on sponsors to help them cover the costs for materials, T-shirts and other supplies for the camp.
Anything that sponsors don’t cover, they pay for out of their own pockets.
“We both have a huge passion for this community. We needed to share this with other people, and we’ll do whatever we need to do that,” McCracken said.
The final camp of this year was held in early July, but plans are already in place for 2019. McCracken, now a student at Ball State University, would like to see it become a permanent part of the community, a tradition that only grows over the years. He and Elliott, who also goes to Ball State, have been working with local supporters to ensure that other leaders can help lead the camp as well.
To Elliott and McCracken, it’s important to keep the mission of their camp going to create a special place for those with special needs, as well as support families and caregivers.
“Thinking a school project would grow into what this has become, seeing how much people love it, is one of the most gratifying things,” Elliott said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Project Reach” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
What: An organization that puts on activity camps for special needs individuals throughout the summer.
Who: The group was formed by three Center Grove High School graduates: Brant McCracken, Ian Elliott and Dustin Evans.
When: Camps are held during the summer
Who can participate: The camps are open to any person with special needs
Cost: Free to attend
How to get involved: Project Reach relies on the help of volunteers and sponsors to put on its camps. To contribute, email [email protected]
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