My Nonprofit Reviews

I attended The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp as a camper and later as a volunteer counselor. I have zero hesitation stating that camp changed my life and made me who I am today. I was born with a severe bleeding disorder, hemophilia. My body also developed an inhibitor, which means my body rejected the only medicine available to treat this disease. As a result, I quickly developed crippling joints with constant bleeding into my joints causing severe chronic pain. On top of this, at the age of 12, I also learned that I contracted AIDS and Hepatitis C from my medication to treat my hemophilia. I was told I had about 1 year to live. All of this led to depression and low self-worth. It was the next summer that I learned of the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. For years I kept to myself and became extremely shy. Not only did I feel I wasn’t worth much, but I was scared to death to let anyone into my life in fear they would discover my HIV status. So it took me about a day at camp to really come out of my shell, but when I did, it was like discovering a whole new world! Before camp I always heard about how awful people were (usually in reference to the treatment of people with AIDS). It wasn’t until I was at camp when realized…there are good people in this world, and more importantly, it was ok to be myself. For that one week at camp, I didn’t have to pretend I was someone I wasn’t. I didn’t have hid from people in fear of them getting to know me. I could be me…100% ME! While the activities were great, it really is the people, campers and counselors, which make this the best organization in the world. I went from feeling like a misfit to feeling like I belong somewhere. I remember sitting up all night with my whole cabin cracking jokes, sharing stories about friends that we’ve lost, to making farting noises, to crying, to sharing tips on the best ways to take that gross tasting medicine…there isn’t anywhere else that this happens. For the first time, I found myself. It was no longer “poor me”, it was “wouldn’t it be cool if I didn’t let my diseases define me” or “I now know I can do amazing things DESPITE my diseases.” Camp gave me the strength and confidence to get out of my room and actually live my life, graduate high school, be the first in my family to graduate college, intern for MTV, live on my own in L.A. and N.Y.C., backpack Europe, and now have a career, married to the woman of my dreams and actually consider starting our own family. All thanks to the life that camp encouraged me to have!

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