News
Camp Metigoshe brings together disabled campers, confirmation candidates
Matthew Semisch
07/01/2014
An important life lesson we all must learn is to not pigeonhole or categorize others by zeroing in one particular trait of theirs.
This summer at Camp Metigoshe on the shores of Pelican Lake, campers of all ages are learning exactly that.
Over four four-day blocks over this month and last, the camp’s Voyageurs program invites campers of all ages that have intellectual, developmental and or physical disabilities.
The first block, which took place June 9-12, invited but was not exclusive to prospective campers between ages 11 and 25.
The third and most recent group began its time at the camp Monday and will be there through Thursday afternoon. The fourth and final group will be at Camp Metigoshe July 14-17.
The Voyaguers groups attend the camp alongside groups of young campers who will soon be confirmed in their churches. Metigoshe Ministries, which runs the camp itself, is rooted in the Lutheran faith.
Michele Anderson of Independence, Inc., works alongside the Voyageurs groups. Independence, Inc., which is based in Minot but has an office in Bottineau at 118 East Sixth Street, is an organization that provides services that help disabilities maintain and increase their own independence within the great community.
Over time, Anderson and Melissa Reinhart, a project manager for Metigoshe Ministries, developed a friendship. That turned into a working relationship, too, when Anderson put forth the idea of having disabled campers work alongside the confirmation candidates.
“In the beginning, I didn’t quite know what the service scope of the camp was and who they serve and how many campers have disabilities,” Anderson said.
“Melissa and I have been good friends for a long time, though, and I asked her if we could do this as a collaborative project.”
Reinhart jumped at the opportunity Anderson and Independence, Inc., were offering. She feels both the confirmation candidates and the Voyageurs get a lot out of the collaborative process they take on together at the camp.
“For confirmation campers, they might come into the camp with an incomplete perspective about people with disabilities,” Reinhart said.
“It’s nice for a project like this to build on that and fill in those blanks where they’re learning that someone’s disability is just one piece of them and not everything they are. They’re learning to see people more as a whole, as a sum of their parts and not just the one.”
One such project the campers work on together involves creating cement tiles using glass pieces of varying colors, shapes and sizes. Campers place the pieces into a design that becomes a tile on top of a square-shaped block of cement.
Students put the pieces together and view the end result as a sum of its parts and not just the first piece the campers started with.
“What we’re teaching (the campers) is that, a lot of times, people have broken perspectives and see just one aspect of a person as opposed to looking at them wholly and getting to know them,” Anderson said.
“They don’t always look at other people thoroughly, and that’s what we’re showing with these mosaics. Someone might see someone else with a disability and that’s as far as that one person goes in how they see the other person, but the point of this project is to give a physical representation of what happens when you look further and look at the whole composition.
“They’re seeing that while one piece of glass doesn’t look like much and doesn’t have a utility, all together, just like people that come together, the final product is collective and strong.”
“When it all comes together, it’s so beautiful because when individuals look at someone with a disability and just focus on that one thing, they’re not getting the whole picture of that person,” Reinhart said.
“It’s fun not just to see projects like that coming together, but also to see the enlightened and knowing looks on our campers’ faces when they’re realizing the message we’re trying to put across with the project.”