Thanks for Your Continued Support of “Camp One Step” Through Your Donation of Aluminum Pop Tops!

Thanks for Your Continued Support of “Camp One Step” Through Your Donation of Aluminum Pop Tops!

By Tim E. Renzelmann

January 21, 2021

In the November/ December 2001 issue of the TLC Supportive Newsletter (the predecessor to this Local Cancer Community Update), Kris Riley wrote an article about Camp One Step and invited readers to collect and donate aluminum pop tops to support this program. In that article she explained, “As a parent of a child with cancer, this program gave Matt back his sense of independence and normalcy during a totally chaotic time in his life. Children aren’t ‘different’ at camp. Baldness, scars, amputations, and medical lines of all kinds are just one of those everyday things. Children can just have fun and be themselves.”

For the most part, all we did, except for a few article updates over the years, is put a container in the waiting area here at Matthews Oncology Associates and Sheboygan Cancer & Blood Specialists and dropped a few tabs in it so folks knew what it was there for.

As you can see... no signage, no description (but maybe I should think about that)! And yet, for nearly twenty years now, small baggies of tabs continued to fill the container while, occasionally, larger bags and boxes show up in my office!

From the Camp One Step website: Camp One Step exists to heal these scars that no one can see. Through community, support, and shared experiences with peers, we deliver happy, pain free medicine called “camp.” We empower children to find new hope and believe again in a brighter future. We empower kids who have cancer, encouraging them to take on the world!

https://camponestep.org/

Watch future Local Cancer Community Updates for more details about Camp One Step, keep those aluminum tabs coming (but please be careful, as we must remove any non-aluminum materials before processing – including any tin tabs, so if they are magnetic, please separate), and send me your guess as to how many pounds of aluminum pop tops we have collected for Camp One Step over the years (HINT: Think TONS)!

FOLLOW UP: Thanks for Your Continued Support of “Camp One Step” Through Your Donation of Aluminum Pop Tops!

By Tim E. Renzelmann

January 28, 2021

As I mentioned in the previous issue of the Local Cancer Community Update, we have been collecting aluminum pop tops for the One Stop Camp program since 2001! Tabs just trickled in at first... but eventually they began to pour in! Numbers have dropped off in recent years... perhaps because I have neglected to promote the campaign effectively!

So, you ask, who goes to camp during a pandemic? Well, with the circumstances of COVID-19, kids didn’t go to camp... but Camp One Step came to them! According to their website: “Camp One Step has transitioned nine of their programs from in-person to virtual and the joy of camp continues!”

Are you curious how? You gotta check out this video:

https://youtu.be/1FQmOw-CaTA

In the last issue I told you I would update you on the TOTAL pounds of aluminum pop tops we have collected over the past nearly twenty years:

TOTAL WEIGHT: 14,593 pounds

That’s more the SEVEN TONS!!! And at approximately 1,128 aluminum tabs per pound... that’s nearly 16.5 MILLION aluminum pop tops!!!

Of course, if you would like to support Camp One Step in other ways, you can certainly do that here: https://camponestep.org/

Otherwise... just PLEASE keep those (aluminum)tabs coming!

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