By Aaron Stark

This past week, A Purposeful Day (APD) held its first-ever Summer’s Best Week Camp, a five-day summer camp for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The program, rented and operated out of the Falls Church Presbyterian Church, saw immense success thanks to its many volunteers — several of whom were neighboring high school students.

This year’s camp saw 16 participants, who engaged in various activities, often Olympic-themed, in alignment with the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, which started this past Friday.

“We start off every day with a big meeting where we do a warm-up. [We teach] something about the Olympics, the history of the Olympics, or new sports and sports they don’t do anymore at the Olympics,” APD President and Founder Kate Ashbrook said. “Then, we move into two hours of activity rotation. They’re moving between the four groups of games, a service project, some sort of craft, and Olympics learning time.”

Participants also engaged in physical activity and theater lessons.

“After that, we have a physical trainer who comes and does a movement class with adaptive movement class. And then we have lunch. Then, Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School’s theater teacher comes and does adaptive theater with us in the afternoons,” Ashbrook said.

Within these activities, members especially enjoyed social interaction with those similar to them.
“My favorite activity here is being with my friends and having a great relationship with them,” said Megan Muskett, a 38-year-old camp participant with Down Syndrome who works as an advisory member to APD’s Board of Directors. “It helps us to know them quite well and have different relationships and different families.”

Volunteers also grew close to the campers as they helped care for them and ensure their safety.

“One of the members was writing thank you notes to the volunteers to show how much they appreciated them,” Ashbrook said. “What a gift that was to the volunteers who came in not knowing what to expect. I think it just really comes to [show] that just because they have a disability, they’re still [people] who want to have a relationship.”

Ashbrook notes that while the camp went smoothly, there were small hurdles throughout the week, including many members having difficulty bearing the heat during outdoor activities. Overall campers still had an enjoyable time, and she plans to host the camp again next year.

Ashbrook sees the past week as a significant accomplishment of APD, which she founded two years ago after meeting Meghan and her father, Joe.

“[Ashbrook] has a Down Syndrome child, and obviously I have a Down Syndrome child,” Joe said. “There was a reaching out, and then [Ashbrook], in her infinite wisdom, saw the need for APD. And she reached out to me and put the strong arm on me and said, ‘Hey, we got to start this for our kids.’”

Ashbrook is driven in her work at APD by her daughter Abby, who is 13 and has Down Syndrome.

“We have worked with the school and with professionals to get Abby where she is now. [After high school], that potentially ends and there’s very limited opportunity for her. I hope we find [her a] job, but statistically, it’s tough. And I hope she has some friends who she remains in contact with, but that’s also tough,” Ashbrook said. “I want better for her, and I think the Falls Church community wants that too.”

Through her interactions with fellow parents of adults with IDD, Ashbrook noticed the lack of learning and social opportunities for adults with IDD after aging out of the public education system. She then founded APD to give adults with IDD a sense of purpose, particularly through service projects — during A Summer’s Best Week, members assembled literacy packets to help new immigrants.

“We’ve been partnering with a couple of local nonprofits like Homestretch and Welcoming Falls Church to do service projects,” Ashbrook said. “I think the mission is helping people understand that just because your abilities may differ from what we would consider a typical person, that doesn’t mean you don’t have a valuable contribution to make. What we want is to find opportunities that show them they’re valuable and that they have a role that is important in their community.”