Summer camps for orphans

Ashinaga holds summer camps for orphaned children each year at 10 different venues across Japan. At the camps, children with similar histories spend time together playing games and sports in an accepting atmosphere. The camps also feature a “life history” program, where students form small groups and talk about their experience of losing a parent. By sharing their often-suppressed grief, the children come to realize that they are not alone in their struggle. This helps them start on the path to a better, brighter future.

Children who have lost parents need to be able to talk and share their feelings. In doing so, they learn that that they are not alone. According to “Children on the Brink 2004,” a joint report by UNAIDS, UNICEF, and USAID, there are at least 143 million children in 93 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean who have lost parents to causes such as war, terrorism, natural disasters, and AIDS. Most of these children do not have the chance to receive psychological or emotional care. From 2000 to 2007, Ashinaga hosted a number of these children at International Summer Camps for Orphans. At the camps, children from similar backgrounds had the chance to meet and talk about their experiences--often for the first time in their lives. The feelings they expressed transcended differences in language, nationality, religion, and ethnicity. Through the camps, children discovered that they were not alone, and this helped them start their journey to the future, carrying with them a bag of hope woven by their newfound friends from across the globe.