Camp Sunshine, a retreat for terminally ill children and their families situated along the shores of Sebago Lake, has initiated an endowment campaign to sustain a year-round program.

As part of this campaign, camp founders Anna and Larry Gould have offered a challenge to match donations ranging from $250,000 to a maximum of $2 million.

In response to the matching challenge, New Balance shoe manufacturing company and three individual contributors have committed $250,000 each.

Hancock Lumber, the Carol J. and K. David Hancock Charitable Trust, and members of the Hancock family have all donated for a total $100,000 to sponsor Camp Sunshine families. In addition, TD Banknorth has given $200,000 to the program.

“We’re aggressive as an organization [in terms of seeking donations]” said Matt Hoidal, executive director at Camp Sunshine.

Hoidal says that the camp offers 25 sessions from February to November, and that the goal is to be open for 40 sessions.

During the year, Camp Sunshine offers weeklong sessions devoted to specific illnesses, such as brain cancer, lupus, and diseases that require organ transplants, costing about $1,500 to sponsor each family for one session. It is one of the few camps which allow families to join their children, offering daylong activities for the children as well as support groups and bereavement programs for their parents. Families attend the program for free.

According to staff at Camp Sunshine, summer activities include horseback riding, swimming, and archery, rock climbing and hiking. Sleigh rides, skiing and more indoor activities are provided during the winter.

Michele Parfumorse, mother of Clayton, a 13-year-old boy who suffers from biliary atresia and has received a liver transplant from his mother, said that spending a week at Camp Sunshine with her son has afforded her the opportunity to interact with other parents who are going through the same hardships.

“I can talk to someone who has lived through what I am experiencing,” she said. “There’s no place on the face of the planet like this.”

Parfumorse also said the exchange of information at the camp is invaluable. For example, one family who has a child with a similar illness may have come across a different treatment, and they can therefore share that information with another family.

“I never met a single donor before I came here,” Parfumorse said. “There are incredible learning resources here.”

According to Parfumorse, Clayton has had problems socializing with other children at home in Massachusetts due to his complications. But at Camp Sunshine, he is free to interact with children who have similar afflictions, and even upon arrival for his week-long stay at the camp, he met another child who had the same disease and had undergone the same operation.

“This is an escape from the world around you,” Clayton said with a huge grin. “It’s one week of paradise.”

Lou and Patricia Forges, who live in Florida, also have children at the camp: Lincoln, 6, and Jackson, 3. Lincoln suffers from viral cardiomyopathy and had a heart transplant at 14 months, and his father says that he suffered because there was nowhere to channel his frustrations.

“As a father,” he said, “I would ask myself questions, like, ‘Why me? Why us?’ But once I met other parents who were going through the same thing, I no longer asked those questions. I was like, ‘OK, now what? Where do we go from here?'”

Patricia Forges agreed there is a “commonality” and a bond shared between every family who stays at the camp. She said there is a high divorce rate between married couples whose children suffer from terminal illnesses, and that the program helps families cope.

“This opportunity has definitely brought us closer together,” she said.

Lincoln, a soft-spoken and modest child, said the activities at the camp are what make it worth all the while.

“I love how everybody comes together and has fun,” he says. “If you don’t know how to do something, they show you how.”

Individual citizens are also making a difference in terms of contributions. For example, according to Donna Leith, development director at the camp, Allyson Trull, 18, and her twin sister Ashley of Tewksbury, Mass., have in lieu of Christmas gifts donated $600 to the camp, which was matched and tripled by a local business.

When asked what he thought about a year-round program, Clayton said, “I wish I were here 365 days a year.”

“I think the counselors would need a break from you, honey,” his mother joked.

Michele Parfumorse and her son Clayton, 13, and Lou and Patricia Forges and their children, Lincoln, 6 and Jackson, 3, are two families who attend Camp Sunshine. The camp, they say, is an opportunity for them to relate to and exchange information with other families who are enduring the same hardships.

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