Submitted by John Colvin, DuPont.
Project New Hope Northwest is a subsidiary of the Lacey Sunrise Lions Club in Lacey, WA that provides family camps and retreats to servicemen, servicewomen, veterans, and their families. These retreats focus on strategies and healing techniques to help mitigate the symptoms caused by military service related Post Traumatic Stresses.
Project New Hope NW is headquartered in Lacey, WA and its president is Pat Bucknell – an Air Force Veteran. Pat dedicates his life to serving military, their families, and the local community through the Lacey Lions Club and Project New Hope.
Over the past several years, Pat, the local Boy Scout Troops, and other volunteers built a rustic campsite, called Camp Bucknell, on Pat’s property in Lacey, WA. Initially, Camp Bucknell provided a campsite for the local Boy Scout Troops to utilize, at no cost to them. In return for the use of the campsite, the Boy Scouts provided a volunteer labor force to maintain it and do small improvements.
The camp has a large bunkhouse that can sleep up to six people in bunk beds and an additional six to eight people if they bring their own cots. Also, the covered fire pit sleeps two additional people for fire guard. The bunkhouse has electricity, woodstove for heat, and indoor plumbing. However, it is still a very rustic camp. The campground itself is about five acres with nice trails to traipse through the woods, and a nice walking track that will eventually become an obstacle course.
Currently, Camp Bucknell’s next event will be a three day, two night veteran men’s retreat. There are several areas of focus for this retreat, first and foremost is creating new and lasting connections with other veterans. Secondly, the retreat will focus on strategies to encourage Post Traumatic Stress Growth, as well as help facilitate better decision making in life choices. Other activities include preparing the area for near term projects such as the obstacle course, archery range, zip line course, and also attaching American flags to wooden flag poles for the Flags Over Lacey Event. Although there is time blocked off for curriculum and work, there is much more time allotted to connection making, meditation, and eating!
We invite all male veterans to reach out and register for the retreat, you can find registration information below. Although this retreat is specifically tailored to male veterans, we hope to have more retreats for female veterans and veteran families as well.
For more information regarding Project New Hope NW, please visit http://lionsprojectnewhopenw.org/
For more information regarding the upcoming veteran men’s retreat held from March 25th – 27th, please contact John Colvin at johnpcolvin@gmail.com.
