Campers and volunteers at Camp Dreamcatcher in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Photo submitted
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For almost 30 summers, HIV-impacted children from Pennsylvania and surrounding states have traveled to the woods of Chester County to play.
They ride boats and horses, and race go-karts on sprawling campgrounds a short drive from Kennett Square. They swim, attend concerts, and make crafts, bonding with each other and a small army of helpers that comes back year after year.
Camp Dreamcatcher, launched at the height of 1990s stigma around the virus, has served thousands of children living with or affected by HIV, all of it free of charge and staffed by volunteers like Taj Brown, a counselor who’s been there since the start.
“I went the first year, and it was incredible,” Brown told PA Local. “I experienced a community of volunteers from every walk of life … everyone sort of drawing on their areas of expertise to create a world where these kids could really just be normal kids.”
Brown’s work with the organization earned him a nomination for our PA Local Heroes series, sponsored by Ballard Spahr.
Reached by phone, founder Patty Hillkirk praised Brown’s commitment, adding, “he has invested thousands of hours in the kids we serve.”
The camp has been a part of some families for generations.
“We have the children and grandchildren of some of our original counselors,” Brown said. “There are also kids who were there in our first years who are now counselors themselves.”
Brown said he wouldn’t miss the annual retreat, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Kids wake early and stay up late. Sometimes emotions run high.
While the camp isn’t about “sitting around holding hands and crying every day about how hard it is dealing with HIV,” he said, emotional expression is encouraged and grieving is expected.
The week’s emotional climax is a “wish log” ceremony that lets the children write a wish on an item and place it in a fire that quickly becomes a blaze.
“Every year the theme of that becomes the things people have lost or that they wish they could get back. Things like, ‘I wish my mom was still here,’ or ‘I wish that nobody ever has to experience this kind of pain,’ or ‘I wish everybody could find a space like this to feel accepted.’”
A poem about the ceremony, written by counselor Raynetta Adams in 2006, includes this passage: Nighttime and the big boys stand in front of the flames in heart wrenching agony. Teenaged men, macho posture, an outward display of strength that crumbles when one by one they loose their emotional baggage to the smoke…
There are always therapists and clinicians on hand.
Photo submitted
From left: Camp Dreamcatcher founder Patty Hillkirk, Kennett Square Mayor Matt Fetick, and Taj Brown. Fetick was delivering sleeping bags for campers.
Brown’s path to Camp Dreamcatcher started when he was an 18-year-old student at Downingtown Senior High School. He’d never dealt with HIV directly, but lots of his friends had. So when his pastor’s wife mentioned that Hillkirk, a local psychotherapist, was looking to start a camp for kids living with and affected by the virus, Brown was intrigued and decided to attend an interest meeting at a Lancaster YMCA to learn more.
He met two boys there, both born with HIV and no more than seven years of age.
One, outgoing and gregarious, had been adopted at birth by a well-off family that lived just north of the city. The other, soft-spoken and shy, lived in a crowded public housing unit.
“These two kids were technically in the same situation, health-wise, but already, even at that age, they were on different paths because of their circumstances,” Brown said. “I was 18. I had been through some things … but these kids every day were dealing with something that is heavier than anything I'd ever known. So it was like, yes, I want to be a part of helping them find safety and acceptance, and I kind of want to learn from them.”
Brown recalls the boys 30 years later. The adoptee is thriving and volunteered at Camp Dreamcatcher last year, but the other, Brown said, “didn't have access to the same kinds of health care and he passed away.” The boy died in 2001. He was buried in a casket donated by the funeral home and clothes sourced by camp volunteers.
Much has changed around HIV and AIDS since Camp Dreamcatcher’s founding, from treatments and prevention tools to mortality rates.
Brown remembers the earliest HIV-positive campers taking a cocktail of large and nauseating pills several times a day. “It was hard for them to go through. It was hard to watch,” he said. Now, a single, smaller daily tablet is more common.
Meanwhile, the number of children born with HIV has fallen sharply. According to a 2021 article in the American Family Physician journal, the annual rate of perinatal HIV transmission has decreased by more than 95% in the United States since the early 1990s.
In Minnesota last year, when a camp for HIV-impacted kids closed due to declining numbers of eligible children, the founders celebrated.
“The year we were founded, 1,630 [American] children were born with HIV,” Camp Heartland founder Neil Willenson told MPR in October. “It's just a medical miracle that 30 years later there might be a handful or less in the U.S. born. They can prevent mother to child transmission. Any founder dreams of the day that their charity can go out of business.”
Brown, who works full-time for a homelessness response organization, said he dreams of the day when a cure for HIV and AIDS exists. But he doesn’t expect summer camp models like Dreamcatcher’s to disappear anytime soon.
“We're dealing with way more than just HIV,” he said. “We're dealing with life's challenges. So I hope there are more people who have the foresight and build the kinds of communities that can facilitate spaces where all people can just feel accepted and not be judged and grow. I hope there's more of that.”
If you or someone you know is interested in volunteering with Camp Dreamcatcher (there are full-time, part-time, and even event-specific options) find more information here.
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