By Icy Frantz
I can still taste the red popsicles.
The kind that melted faster than you could eat them — dripping down wrists, staining T-shirts, leaving you sticky and unapologetically happy.
Summer camp, for me, was freedom.
When I was little, it was a day camp. A place where the kids from different schools mixed together. We swam until our hair turned green and brittle from chlorine. We played games that felt vitally important at the time. We made fast friendships that somehow lasted.
Later, it was a sleep-away camp. Horses and tennis courts. Camp songs sung loudly and badly around roaring fires. The particular thrill of independence — being away from home but knowing you were still safe. Growing, just a little, in ways that felt almost invisible but stayed with you long after the trunks were unpacked.
Camp was an innocent kind of belonging.
A pause from academic pressure.
A place to be fully a kid. Last week, I met with two members of the Greenwich Board of Human Services, and I found myself thinking about those popsicles again.
Because not every child in our community gets that summer.
The Greenwich Department of Human Services runs a Campership Fund – quietly and faithfully – raising money so children who might otherwise miss out can attend camp. It is not just about swimming and crafts and field games.
It is about dignity.
It is about access.
It is about a parent being able to go to work in the summer without worrying where their child is or who is watching them.
It is about a child starting school in September with stories to tell.
In 2025, 120 children across Greenwich received campership scholarships.
This year, the need is even greater.
Camp costs continue to rise, and one long-standing community camp partner that previously donated multiple weeks of camp will not be operating a summer day camp in 2026. That generosity filled a real gap. Its absence leaves one.
Here is what it takes:
$800 sponsors a camper for four weeks.
$400 sponsors a camper for two weeks.
Any amount helps write a different kind of summer story.
For me, it was an easy yes. Because I remember what those weeks meant.
Because childhood is short.
Because the difference between isolation and belonging can sometimes be something as simple as a swim test, a team color, a sticky popsicle, and a counselor who knows your name.
I hope you will join me.
Not just in funding camp — but in preserving a season of childhood that shapes confidence, friendship, and possibility.
Let’s make sure summer still feels like summer for every child in our community.
How to Give: Donations may be mailed (payable to GDHS Fund) to:
Attn: Campership Greenwich Department of Human Services, 101 Field Point Road, Greenwich, CT 06830
Online donations can be made at: https://www.greenwichdhsfund.org/campership-program
