About the Camp
Kan Etwal, or “Camp of Stars,” is a one-week summer camp experience for children and youth living with HIV. The impact and experience of spending one week away from home, making new friends, being challenged, and discovering individual strengths has an amazing and wonderful transformative power. For the kids in Kan Etwal, the camp experience builds self-esteem and resilience and spotlights the significance of healthy habits. It even helps turn the daily medication routine into a fun and celebratory experience, improving their adherence to this regimen even after camp ends.
In a study conducted by San Diego State University, children who attend our camp program show measurable improvements in HIV knowledge and habits after camp. This was especially true of those campers who needed the most help in adopting healthy behaviors and improving their psychosocial wellbeing. Those children who scored the lowest on a knowledge and habit test prior to attending camp, showed an 84% increase in knowledge of how to manage their HIV. Additionally, for all campers, there was an 87% increase in compliance in taking their daily regimen of anti-retroviral treatment.