Moorestown FEP Helped 10 Disadvantaged Children Attend Summer Camps

MOORESTOWN, NJ — This summer, 10 financially underprivileged Moorestown children, ages 7-16, went to summer camp as recipients of scholarships paid for by FEP, the Friends Enrichment Program of the Peace and Social Committee of Moorestown Friends Meeting, FEP announced.

Originally, FEP wanted to enroll 25 qualifying children in 2017 summer programs. However, that number slowly dwindled by the end of the school year, due to factors FEP said were outside their control.

Altogether, the 10 FEP scholarship recipients spent a total of 41 weeks in day or overnight summer camps.
Four of the children attended the five-week, half-day Summer Parks Program of the Moorestown Department of Parks and Recreation.

Two went to Camp Dark Waters overnight camp—one for two weeks, the other for four weeks as a counselor-in-training. Two went to Camp Haluwasa overnight camp for one week each. Two went to YMCA Camp Worth for a total of four weeks, and one attended the YMCA eight-week counselor-in-training program. Additionally, one FEP teenager worked in the Summer Parks Program as a counselor-in-training at no cost to FEP or to her parents.

Of those who couldn’t attend, two teenagers who had their eyes set on the popular YMCA Traveling Teen Camp had to be withdrawn from the list of summer scholars because their mothers wouldn’t have been able to drive them to the Mt. Laurel campsite and still arrive at their place of work on time. Other children disappeared from FEP’s radar screen entirely. They had moved away, their parents no longer able to afford Moorestown, according to FEP.

FEP was created in the spring of 1997. It reaches out to financially underprivileged Moorestown children and their families with a message of love and inclusion. It offers qualifying children scholarships to attend summer camp and enroll in art classes or sports clinics or take private music lessons at no cost to their parents.

Generous discounts from summer camps and other service providers enables FEP to help more children than would otherwise be possible.

FEP is run by volunteers. In the past 20 years, it has issued scholarships to 397 Moorestown children, with many of them benefiting from scholarships year after year until they outgrew the program or moved on.

In 2006, the Moorestown Chapter of Church Women United awarded FEP its Human Rights Award, and in 2015, the Southern Burlington County NAACP awarded FEP its Community Service Award. FEP’s work in support of Moorestown children has also been recognized by the Upper Elementary School and the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Patch file photo