BY JENNI NEWBURY ROSS

PALS Co-Executive Director

One of the most important components of the PALS model is our 1 to 1, peer to peer model. We believe strongly in the power of shared experiences, and we pair people together who can connect at camp but also find common ground in their life stages as well.

Our exact age ranges have fluctuated over the past two decades of PALS. While we started camp as a program for individuals 14-21 in 2004, we eventually made the decision to extend to 12-25, and then slowly removed our upper age limit as we pursued modified programs for our individuals 21+.

Every year we are faced with a significant waitlist for our participants with Down syndrome, and we do our very best to serve as many people as possible each summer. We want to ensure we are allowing space for new participants to experience PALS, and and are holding focus on what we do best - connecting young people together to change attitudes and inspire a greater world of belonging.

With this in mind, we are setting an age range of 12-30 for our full-week, Camp PALS programs this summer.

Our modified programs continue to be programs for participants ages 21+ to join us for a more adult experience with increased independence. We are working to offer more modified programs each year to meet the need and interest in this category.

In addition, those who are over the age of 30 and not interested in a modified program, will get priority for our off season programs - such as PALS Kalahari this fall.

We believe that the greater PALS community, and especially our alumni, will be the catalyst for truly bringing our vision of a more inclusive world to life. We are committed to offering meet up opportunities in the off season (like PALS Pop Up events) and alumni activities at each of our programs so people can gather and celebrate the PALS magic together.

As always, please reach out with any questions or ideas at support@palsprograms.org.