Camp for Kids With HIV Is Closing for a Good Reason

Neil Willenson was a college student with dreams of becoming an actor when he met Nile Sandeen, a 5-year-old boy with HIV. As a 22-year-old in 1993, Willenson pivoted from his Hollywood dreams and founded a camp, One Heartland, so that Sandeen and other children with HIV—who were often isolated and experienced the discrimination that came along with a lack of understanding of the virus and how it was transmitted—could experience the simple pleasures of being kids. Now, more than three decades later, that camp is closing—because the number of kids contracting HIV has plummeted.

In recent years, the camp has served other populations, including kids with diabetes and LGBTQ+ youth, and the nonprofit organization that runs it hopes to sell the Minnesota property to another kid-focused group, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Despite the reason it's closing, former campers are sad to see it go. "It's a heartbreaker," says Dylan Edwards, who attended the camp with his brother, Chris, who died of HIV-related complications at age 12 in 1999. "But the purpose of the camp was for sick kids," so if there simply aren't as many anymore, "it's hard to feel bad about that," he says. The full story at the Star Tribune is worth a read. (More Minnesota stories.)