All the rock wall climbing, lanyard weaving and campfire singing at Camp Harmony in Malibu would have been a good enough escape for 200 campers bused in from shelters for the homeless.
And the community service points earned by about 80 Gap-wearing teenagers who volunteered as camp counselors was a fair enough reward.
But something else happened on the shady campground nestled on a hill beside the Pacific Ocean. In the kids' own words, their eyes were opened. Their hearts and minds were changed.
Tears blurred the once-clear dividing lines of age and class in a den of seven campers and three teen counselors during a candle-lighting ceremony on a recent Sunday evening, their final night together at camp.
Volunteer counselor and high school junior Graham Littlefield, a self-described "manly man" with Gucci shades, told his campers, "Material things are not what matters. We may have different circumstance but, with the right attitude, you can do anything you want. You can have happiness."
Abraham Garcia, a weeping 11-year-old in donated play clothes, thanked Graham, who attends the private Windward School, for taking the boys swimming and making them laugh. Abraham moved out of a Sun Valley shelter just after leaving camp last year.
Sleep-away summer camps like this one are, for the most part, getaways for the haves and have-lots. But Camp Harmony took its campers from Los Angeles-area shelters or after-school programs for severely impoverished youths from 7 to 11 years old.
Yasmeen Badillo, 9, said swimming was her favorite activity at first. Some of the kids never get into a pool until the five-day camp. Others live only miles away from Los Angeles County's 79 miles of coastline but had never seen the ocean until the bus turned onto Pacific Coast Highway.
Yasmeen has lived in a shelter for the homeless for the three years she's been going to the summer camp. Camp has given her a break from helping her mother care for her baby sister. It also has made her more interested in school because children may not return if they don't keep up their grades.
"I am going to work hard on my times tables when I go back to school," Yasmeen said. "My dad told me math is going to be harder in the fourth grade, and I want to come back. So, I'm working on it."
For the mostly college-prep students who come from the Westside and San Fernando Valley to volunteer, the five-day camp offered an exhausting but welcome departure from what might have been a self-centered summer.
