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Camp Brooklyn celebrates Lunar New Year, and the kids benefit

February 18, 2012 Denise Romano

Photos courtesy of Butch Moran.

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The Camp Brooklyn Fund (CBF) held a special Lunar New Year celebration at the New Spring Garden Restaurant on 65^th Street last week.

This helped celebrate Chinatown in Brooklyn: it brought people to restaurants that they may not have known about, explained Debra Garcia, executive director of the Camp Brooklyn Fund. It gives us an opportunity to celebrate the Year of the Dragon and the main goal is to benefit Camp Brooklyn, which raises money to have low-income kids go away to camp for two weeks.

At the celebration, several community members were honored. They included: Gary Flom, president and chief executive of Bay Ridge Ford; George Hulse, vice president of external affairs at Health First; Allan Kramer II, a community leader and Camp Brooklyn board member; and Irene LoRe, executive director of Park Slopes Fifth Avenue BID.

Borough President Marty Markowitz started the organization in 2002 under the umbrella of programs he oversees at Borough Hall. So the program could live on after Markowitzs term is up, it was incorporated as a 501c3 charity, with the beep serving as honorary chair.

Our job is to raise money and raise enough of it to keep sending kids to camp, Garcia said, adding that 50 kids were sent to camp during its first year and that number grew to 400 this past summer. Our goal is to keep increasing each year. We hope it lasts forever.

Garcia added that CBF does not pick students to go to camp; it uses an outside organization to administer funds. Parents or caregivers have to apply to camps directly. For more information, visit www.campbrooklyn.org.