In 2017, the Nuns fire ripped through Napa and Sonoma Counties, and devastated the Enchanted Hills Camp property. It was a tragic moment, but we turned the challenge into opportunity: We’re building a reimagined, year-round home for blind and low-vision community members to grow, explore, and learn.
On Saturday, August 19 from 6 to 11:30 pm at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco’s historic Union Square, we’ll gather the Lighthouse community and its supporters to benefit that effort at An Enchanted Evening. Rebecca Alexander, an Oakland-born disability rights advocate and award-winning author, is headlining the event. She is a psychotherapist, group fitness instructor, extreme athlete, and disability rights advocate whose mission is to inspire others to live deeply meaningful lives. Born with a rare genetic disorder called Usher syndrome (type 3A), she has been simultaneously losing both her vision and hearing since she was an adolescent.
Recently, Rebecca and our gala committee chairs, Kathryn Webster and Laura Allen, sat down to talk about the importance of camp experiences in the lives of kids who are blind, low vision, or deafblind.
Rebecca helps facilitate camps in New York and New Jersey for kids with Usher syndrome, and talks about how much kids who attend expand their confidence. “The transition from meeting these kids on the day they come and the day they leave – there is no more fulfilling feeling than to see the evolution of these kids in just a week,” Rebecca said. “They’re surrounded by other kids who are just like them.”
Kathryn described how a lack of blind and low vision peers as she grew up left her feeling very different. “If I knew about Enchanted Hills, about camps that gave me that exposure, I’d have been set up in a much different position when I was going to college,” Kathryn said. “But that’s the power of telling our story.”
This event will celebrate Enchanted Hills’ unique stories, while ensuring it has lasting impact well into the future.
“It’s so important for us to stop and celebrate the experience we can help create for children as well as their families at these camps,” Laura said. “Creating a place for children to play and be free, have adventures, be creative, play music, learn new skills, make friends, and, most importantly, have that sense of belonging.”
“By supporting LightHouse and supporting this cause, you are affecting people’s lives for a lifetime,” Rebecca said. “You’re changing the trajectory of the confidence they will be able to build. That is something that Laura, Kathryn, and I all wish we had had access to growing up. We can’t change that, but we can change what children and their families have now.”
Check out the full conversation in the video below. There are still tickets available for An Enchanted Evening, which will feature keynote speaker Rebecca Alexander and musical guest Meghan Downing.
