Rescued By Our Friends!

When our Summer Nature Experience instructors arrived early to prep for the day’s activities on Wednesday, July 21, everything seemed normal at first.  But as soon as the team finished our morning meeting and coffee and everyone split up to complete assignments, we discovered a shocking reality … someone had stolen ALL of our camp tables!

The eight tables had a value of five hundred dollars, so this was a significant loss to a non-profit organization like CEED. Beyond the value of the tables, it was also distressing that someone would do that … especially to a kid’s camp!  Furthermore, we faced a serious problem of logistics, requiring rethinking of planned activities for 30 kids and 5 leadership students.

But here’s where a heartbreaking story turns heartwarming …

Within minutes of putting out word about the theft, we began to get phone calls.

First, the amazing Post Morrow Foundation, which has been so supportive and generous to CEED, volunteered some of their banquet tables as a stopgap measure. 

The very next morning, three friends came by CEED and donated a total of six replacement tables! 

It didn’t stop there. Another friend dropped off a $200 Target gift card to purchase more tables. A long-time and generous supporter of CEED, John Petsco of Long Island Creative Contracting, insisted on donating eight tables – full replacement!  This was fantastic, because we actually needed more than our original eight tables!

And the goodwill just kept flowing. Another friend notified us that he had made a donation at ceedli.org/donate of funds for yet another table AND a security camera system, even though we told him the tables had been replaced!

In the end, even though we kept telling people the eight tables had already been replaced, we had been given a total of 14 tables plus a security camera!

Not only is this a wonderful boon for CEED financially, saving us the cost of replacing the tables, but we now have the number of tables we really need, a security system, and most of all, a feeling of community that convinces us that despite the pain of the original theft, we are among friends.

Thank you to the entire CEED family for responding so generously. You’re the best!

– Ranger Eric Powers
Summer Nature Experience Director