There is a 10-year-old boy who has no idea where his mother is, who has never met his father, and who was recently placed in the 10th foster home of his young life.
Dickensian, right?
One week last summer, the boy went to a place that was designed just for him. The Royal Family Kids’ Camp () is staffed by specially trained adults who had one purpose: to give David a great experience and a glimpse of what it’s like to be loved.
There are water sports, a zipline, horseback riding, three good meals a day, campfires. The works.
In fact, one night during the week, somebody brought out a birthday cake with the boy’s name on it, and the whole camp sang “Happy Birthday” to him.
For the first time in his life.
The other children at the camp are also foster children, and the ratio of students to adults is less than 2:1. It’s an amazing experience, one that changes lives.
At least, everybody hopes it does. In the 10-year-old boy’s particular case, it’s hard to say exactly. That’s because when David returned from camp, his case worker picked him up, because his foster family had chosen to give him up during the week he was gone.
That’s not the saddest story I’d heard in the last year. That honor belongs to a 14-year-old boy who lives in an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico.
As with many such orphanages, this one receives an annual visit from American missionaries who travel down to work on infrastructure projects and meet whatever needs they see. This past year, the missionaries took with them $25 gift cards for the children, just to give them something special to spend at the local Walmart.
How did this 14-year-old spend his $25? He bought dog food, so the stray dog that had become like one of the family would get good meals, too.
At a time in which Christians are being widely criticized as “hateful,” it is worth noting that the organizers of the camp and the missionaries at the orphanage are Christians, answering the biblical call to serve the least among us.
But this isn’t about the failures of systems and states to serve the least among us in a dignified and meaningful way. It’s about you and me, and public dialogue.
You see, we are entering into another season of political campaigning (when, it seems, aren’t we?), and politics has become a sport for us. It’s about winning and losing, momentum, mistakes and strategies, superstars and goats. We forget that politics — the act of crafting public policy — is actually supposed to be about doing things that make lives better for people like these two boys I’ve described.
So, in all the upcoming drama about a school board and a union in conflict, try to keep in mind that before this school board was in office, one in three graduates required remediation in college. Since that school board’s ascension, one in three graduates still required remediation.
In the upcoming arguments about immigration, try to keep in mind that kids like the 14-year-old boy who spends his gift money caring for the dog are desperate to find a glimmer of hope and of opportunity.
And while our local and national politicians exploit every permutation and combination of wealth and income disparity to buy a couple extra votes, kids like the 10-year-old just need a home and a system that works for more than one week at a camp.
The problems we face are real, they are enormous, and they really do take a lot of energy and creativity to improve. Try not to get sucked in by all the noise of people whose biggest problem is whether or not they win an election.
Michael J. Alcorn (mjalcorn@comcast.net) of Arvada is a public school teacher, fitness instructor and father of three.
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