Hello New Windsor. Covid 19 has affected so many people these past four months turning lives upside down, but it is our children that I am most concerned about. Everything our kids know has been put on hold. They were taken out of school in the middle of a school year to have to do virtually learning. All of their extracurriculars including sports, clubs, etc. were canceled, including summer camp.
Summer camp is something that kids look forward to all year and although the Governor eventually decided to allow day camps with many restrictions our Town Supervisor and Town Board in New Windsor did not feel comfortable with us to have camp this year since it would be extremely hard to social distance children and to follow all the guidelines and medical protocols that must be administered in order to do camp.
We normally have up to 400 campers in New Windsor including the Counselor In Training program, and another close to 40 staff who are a part of our camp. That is a lot of young people that New Windsor normally serves in summer that have been affected due to the coronavirus.
So the New Windsor Recreation Department with that in mind has decided to team up with other Recreational professionals from Orange, Ulster, Dutchess, Putnam, Rockland, and Sullivan Counties to offer a program called “Amped for Camp.” Amped for Camp will be a summer camp program that kids can do from home. All they have to do is log in to www.ampedforcamp.com every day to get their schedule and what activities and game ideas that they can do from home. This is not a virtual camp because we are not looking for kids to be on computers all day, they had enough of that doing virtual school.
They will just sign on in the morning to find out what to do then head outside. This program is 100 percent free and Camp starts July 6. We hope to see everyone there!

Birthday shout outs this week go to Josh Ziegler whose birthday is on July 1, to Ava Zarrilli whose birthday is on July 2, to Nora Urban whose birthday is on July 4, to Dan Giangrasso and Ian Mullarkey whose birthdays are on July 6, to Ethan Osbourne whose birthday is on July 7, and to anyone else out there celebrating birthdays this week If anyone has a birthday or other special event you want mentioned in my column, or have anything going on in New Windsor that you want the world to know about you can reach me at mveronesi@optimum.net or by calling 845-629-1260. Have a great week.