Welcome to Odyssians Camp
We organise a week-long fun-packed camping adventure holiday for disabled adults aged 18 to 35, every year since 1994. We have no paid staff, so we are looking for volunteer helpers of any age who can help us take care of our disabled campers' needs (like eating and dressing) as well as help us have fun (like swimming or riding specially adapted bicycles) next August. It's hard work, but you don't need any experience: we'll partner you with an experienced helper who can help you learn how to do it.

If you have a physical disability and you are aged 18 to 35, why not have a look around to see if you would like to join us too?

24th to 31st August 2013 Apply now
(if you can't make these dates in August, our friends at Trekkers are running a camp in May/June
and it'll be almost as good - click here to find out more)

Thanks so much to all our volunteer helpers and disabled campers who gave their time for free and made Odyssians 2012 so successful. An incredible 74% of you rated us "excellent": thanks!

You said:

"Odyssians rules! It's such a great opportunity for the campers and it's great to see them being truly happy"

"We are all like one big happy family"

"The atmosphere and interaction between campers and helpers was worth coming back for"

"I liked throwing water bombs at Rob"

"Can't wait for next year!"

You also made lots of suggestions about things we can do better.

Lots of you thought some people worked much harder than others. To help this, next year we'll keep a closer eye on who's putting in less effort and be more consistent about asking them to do a little more - this will help us arrange cover if you need to go to bed earlier some nights too.

You also asked for more training, so we'll arrange more formal training sessions for the first day. This also means we'll be more strict: if you have care needs, you will not be able to arrive before 5pm unless you have arranged an earlier start in advance. This will help us concentrate on training our volunteer helpers for the first couple of hours, and in turn means we'll have a better handover when you do arrive.

Finally, you told us you liked the swimming better when there were fewer people in the pool, so we'll be splitting our camp into smaller groups for swimming this year.

You made some great suggestions for themes and activities too: the most popular was "wild west", so that will be the theme for our Friday night fancy dress party. See you there!

You also made hundreds of other comments, and we'll use them all to help us plan the detail for future camps. If you want to add anything, anonymously or publicly, we'd love to hear from you. Just say hello at gwa@odyssianscamp.org.uk

Gold Duke Of Edinburgh's
Award
Residential Opportunities
CLICK HERE
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