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Liu encourages kids to join council summer camps


With $900,000,…

By Jonathan Kay

Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) visited campers at PS 107’s section of the New York City Council Sports & Arts Summer Camp to praise the facility’s efforts and emphasize its continuing availability to families throughout the community.

With $900,000, the City Council sponsors 54 public camps at schools throughout the five boroughs, including 15 in Queens. The camps, now in their third week of operation, will be open through Aug. 8, and children ages 5 through 12 can register at any time to spend their afternoons participating in both arts and crafts and sports at the schools’ facilities.

“We want everyone in this community to know that this program is still available to them,” Liu said.

Although 170 children already have registered at PS 107’s camp, at 167-02 45th Ave. in Flushing and each facility takes a maximum of 100 campers per day, more space still is available because attendance is not mandatory and children do not attend every day, said Ian Walker, the city’s director of summer camps.

Each camp runs in conjunction with summer school in the hope that children also will take advantage of summer education opportunities, even though they are at a recreational camp, Walker said.

“This program gets kids from local neighborhoods, gives them something good to do and enhances their education,” Liu said. “Without this program, kids would have nothing constructive to do and that can be harmful for the future.”

Liu praised the City Council’s fund-raising initiatives in bringing the program to the borough for a sixth straight year and pointed to his personal contribution from discretionary funds to PS 107 to show how strongly he believes in the camps.

Throughout the visit Liu focused on the program’s fiscal and resourceful efficiency, which enables it to benefit the community as well as the campers.

“The program gives kids something constructive to do and it utilizes existing facilities,” Liu said. “It’s effective for the kids and cost-efficient for the city.”