Aaron’s Acres came about because a small group of parents wanted a camp program for their children, ages 5-9 who had disabilities. For our first summer, in 1998, we had 11 children, ages 5-9 attend a 1 week, half day program at the Lancaster Jewish Community Center. With every year, we continued to grow and expand our programs in the following ways:

• Expanded the number of weeks and length of days of camp in Lancaster
• Increased the participants’ ages to 21 years old
• Added a monthly school year program (Friday evenings for older participants and Saturday evenings for younger participants)
• Established a physical camp site in Berks and Dauphin counties for a good number of years, before consolidating all programs to one campus, but offered transportation from these 2 other counties
• Created our Aaron’s Acres Acts of Kindness program (triple AOK) in which older campers give back and make a difference in the lives of others by completing service projects at local non-profits (such as Habitat for Humanity, Power Packs, Cross Net Ministries, Alex’s Lemonade Stand and a local nursing home), in the afternoon after attending camp in the morning for a 2 week session during the summer.

In Aaron’s Acres’ history, any growth or expansion of programs has been a result of receiving feedback from families. Our Administrative Team believe that parents know best as to what they need and what they don’t need. In addition, they know what is out in the community that works and unfortunately, they also know what is out in the community that doesn’t work. We have always valued our parents’ input and welcome it at all times. Following all programs, we conduct a survey in which we ask for constructive feedback in order to continue to meet our mission and take more steps to reach our vision! Our team evaluates the input and determines what is realistic moving forward. It is our hope that we will always remain true to this and continue to hear our families and respond accordingly, as best as we can.

Adding programs, increasing the ages of our participants, and scheduling activities to occur more frequently will continue to take place at Aaron’s Acres. At all times, we want to listen to our parents and the larger community in order to continue our work with children and young adults who have disabilities. We have done this for 25 years and look forward to the next 25 years!