By David Benoit
Special to the Reporter

Basking in the hot sun on the green grass of UMass-Boston's Campus Center lawn, and greeted by a family of political legends, Camp Shriver rang in its first day on Monday.

There to welcome the campers and family members to the two-week long summer camp were Tim Shriver, the Chairman of the Special Olympics and senior Massachusetts senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Camp Shriver looks to bring together children who have intellectual disabilities and those who don't, and show them that through sports and athletic endeavors they can recognize that they have a great deal in common. This is the first year the camp will be held in Boston, and it is one of only six sites across the country that continue the mission of Eunice Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics.

Speaking about the camp that his mother started on their front lawn in 1962, Shriver recalled what he learned about inclusion.

"It didn't take me long to understand that the chance to play looks very simple, looks very nice, looks sweet. …But in those days that chance was transformative. It not only gave those campers what they so desperately wanted, which was a chance to have fun, but it also gave everyone that was there the chance to see that everyone deserves a chance. It was a chance to see that inclusion and acceptance of every person should be the norm, in the country and the world."

For the next two weeks campers will play games, swim, tour Fenway Park, take a cruise on the Dorchester Bay, and learn that despite their differences they can all achieve the same things.

"This is about demonstrating how children of all abilities can become friends through sports," said Gary Siperstein, the director of UMass' Center for Social Development and Education, and one of the leading men behind the camp. "I think that this is a camp that can serve as a model for the entire Boston community to see that all ability levels are coming together to shoot hoops, play soccer, and to swim."

There are a total of 60 campers attending Camp Shriver, thirty of them have some form of special needs, but all are there to experience everything together. Siperstein pointed out that when conducting reviews for the camp he found out that an overwhelming majority had no where to go the summer before. This summer they were able to attend Camp Shriver for free.

Deaundria Killings of Dorchester said she was already enjoying her first experience at a summer camp, "I'm excited about coming here, it's my first time here. We are learning to play basketball and dribble with both hands and cross over with the ball."

Her partner in the camp group "Skittles, Taste the Rainbow" Jaslyn Gonzalez echoed her sentiments about being at camp.

"It's really fun, we get to meet a lot of kids and make new friends. And we are going swimming," she said excitedly.

Camp counselors are intentionally not told which of their campers have special needs and which don't, a technique that Siperstein hopes intensifies the inclusive aspect of the camp, and that Kennedy believes is at the heart of his sister's mission.

Recalling the special bond that his sister Eunice shared with their special needs sister Rosemary, Kennedy spoke of what the two taught the Kennedy clan about abilities.

"We found out that Rosemary, at the end of the time of coaching from Eunice, that she could do it as well as all the other members of the family," he said. "And that is what Camp Shriver is all about. We are all going to move along together. And all of the children here are going to swim and play games together, and they are all going to learn to do it and they will do it just as well, if not better, than anyone else. They will enjoy it, they will work together, and they will make great friends."

And as Shriver passionately explained, those at the camp are charged with a mission to make a change for more than the next two weeks.

"Too many children with special needs are still rejected in school, too many still sit alone in the lunchroom, still too many sit alone on the bus," he said. "The challenge is for each of us to realize that every camper here has a skill, not a disability, not a difference, or a weakness, but a skill, and if we can martial those skills, even in a time of division and separation, we can hope for a great win for everyone."