Campassion: A Service-Based, Kindness Kids Camp

Campassion’s mission is in its name: Camp + Compassion = Campassion. Founded by Boston Public School teacher Kathleen Chiong, Campassion is a summer camp designed to teach children how to find joy in activism and get involved in service projects.

My name is Kathleen Chiong and I have been a proud Boston Public School teacher for the past eight years at The Jackson Mann K-8 School and The Eliot K-8 Innovation School. My teaching philosophy is simple: I care most about my third-grade students walking out of my classroom doors loving others and themselves.

In a few words, I teach kids how service can be fun! During the school year, I run service-based projects with my students. Each month, we choose a nonprofit from the Greater Boston area to support. Our projects have helped organizations such as Hope & Comfort, Birthday Wishes, Friends of Boston’s Homeless, and the New England Center and Home for Veterans.

I’ve witnessed so much magic happen. My students create videos to inspire other kids to make valentines for veterans, collaborate while counting tubes of toothpaste for those in need of access to hygiene products, share fun updates for birthday "partylicious pack" item drives for children facing housing insecurity, and even use sock puppets to rally up their peers to donate socks to shelters in the Boston area. I’ve teared up from first seeing kids have fun with the scripts and directions I give, to eventually creating their own ideas (I could have never created a sock puppet name like “Dwayne ‘The Sock’ Johnson” or “Sockquille O’Neal”). Like I said, magic.

Based on years of experience within my own classroom, I’ve designed a hands-on curriculum to teach compassion for others and for oneself. I too love serving my community and want to help children personally develop into compassionate, kind individuals through modeling and working together towards a shared mission.

Each day, we will work on our compassion projects--spotlighting nonprofits through social media, rallying up our community to get involved, going on walking field trips to nonprofits, and helping raise money for them. Our campers will also practice gratitude, mindfulness, and exercise through games, journaling, meditation, discussion, and book clubs. And finally, we’ll end with an event: a student-run showcase in Boston, highlighting how our campers dedicated time out of their summer vacations to help others.

I am setting up a GoFundMe to help my camp be the most impactful that it can be. Your donations would help with funding location space, furniture, books, equipment for filming and fun, materials for our showcase, and advertising.

Any donations to help support Campassion are greatly appreciated! I look forward to updating you all about our journey. Thank you all so much for your support!

Website: www.campassion.org

IG: @campassionboston

Email: [email redacted]