Church Home Society honors Bishop Shaw with summer camp fund

The Church Home Society has announced that it will create an endowment fund for summer camp scholarships in honor of Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE.

The society's board of trustees voted in December to create within its endowment a $1-million fund, to be called the Bishop M. Thomas Shaw Campership Fund.  Annual income from the fund will be deposited into the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center's summer camp scholarship fund "to enable a greater number of young people to attend the camp," according to the Church Home Society's announcement.

The Church Home Society is an independent nonprofit corporation related to the Episcopal Church that makes grants to organizations working with at-risk young people.

"We on the Church Home Society Board of Trustees are blessed that w The Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center in Greenfield, N.H. e are financially able to make this meaningful gift to the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center, and to know that for years to come scholarship monies will be available for our diocesan youth," said Anngie Tyler, the board's president, adding, "It is also a way in which we can honor our beloved Bishop Tom Shaw, as this camp means so much to him."

Shaw's leadership and fundraising efforts made the vision for a diocesan conference center a reality, enabling the purchase and development of the 325-acre lakeside property near Greenfield, N.H., that opened in 2003 as the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center.  The center's summer program has since served nearly 10,000 campers.

“The Board of Directors of the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center is excited and humbled by this wonderful gift," the board's president, the Rev. Jonathan Eden, said.  "Through the generosity of the Church Home Society, we will be able to live into Bishop Shaw’s vision of providing young people with a profound experience of Christian formation and Spirit-led community through the summer camp experience.  This extraordinary gift will make this wonderful place and community more accessible to the broad diversity of children and youth from across our diocese for generations to come.”

As he prepares to retire later this year, after nearly 20 years as the bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, Shaw has requested that any financial gifts made in his honor be designated for the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center.  Information about making a gift to the Fund for the Second Decade of the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center is available here.