Jason Chacko slips into a childlike state of mind when describing the camp he’s served for the last decade. He likes to call it the Hundred Acre Wood, a name it comes by honestly.
“I think I’m the only one that calls it that, but it’s 100 acres right in the middle of the city.”
While the grounds inspire the same spirit of childhood adventure as Winnie the Pooh’s iconic setting, Camp Aldersgate offers a very real natural landscape for individuals with special needs to experience classic summer camp fun, weekend camps and more.
Aldersgate After Dark is one of the camp’s two major annual fundraisers, which Jason and his wife Kristin will co-chair this spring, but his own introduction to Camp Aldersgate reaches back before his high school days. At 13, he volunteered as a counselor-in-training (CIT) during one of the camp’s medical sessions for kids with muscular dystrophy.
“I had this 17 year old in my group who hadn’t been in a pool since he was little. We have a fully compliant pool, and I carried him in, lifted him up and he got to feel weightless again,” Jason says. “I will remember his laugh for my entire life because he had the most uncontrolled giggle of any 17-year-old-boy.”
Jason’s time as a volunteer stuck with him. Through the Little Rock Rotary Club, Jason shared his history with the camp, and Camp Aldersgate CEO Sonya Schmidt Murphy eventually asked him to join the board.
“Having been a counselor there when I was 13, coming back when I was 32, 33, it was a really neat perspective to see how much things have changed in 20 years. They built brand new cabins, they built brand new facilities. They have air conditioning,” Jason says.
And now as a board member for nearly a decade, he’s still as dedicated to Camp Aldersgate’s work, an unwavering commitment that mirrors Aldersgate’s dedication to its mission since 1947: creating a world without barriers. In its earliest days, that meant providing a place where interracial church groups could worship together. The medical camps that are now a hallmark of Aldersgate’s programming were established just more than two decades later.
“The genes of who we are today began in 1971 with Asthma Camp,” Murphy says. “Once leadership realized that children with medical conditions could be safely served, all of our other camps were created.”
The Chackos see a clear throughline between Aldersgate’s mission, origin story and the work it does today.
“This focus on med camps and kids with physical needs or mental needs is definitely a big part of camp, but its mission and vision statement focus on saying, ‘Look, there should be no barriers to anybody that wants a human connection,’” Jason says. “Anybody that wants to try something, wants to experiment, wants to explore nature — that big picture is the dream of camp. There’s nothing that should hold anybody back from trying.”
The programs Camp Aldersgate offers all stem from this big-picture dream of camp.
“We have evolved, but summer camp is still our Super Bowl,” Murphy says.
This summer, the campus will host seven weeklong sessions starting with a mix of medical camps for campers with a specific diagnosis including diabetes, muscular dystrophy, spinal disorders and chronic health and audiology issues. Two weeks will then be dedicated to its inclusive Kota Camp that welcomes more rare diagnoses and intellectual disabilities, plus siblings or friends of campers.
“Being able to have that normal experience of going to a camp and being around a bunch of other kids like them in that community, it’s priceless,” Kristin says.
The campus will also host a week dedicated to a relatively new focus group for Camp Aldersgate, young adults ranging from age 19 to 40.
“Two years ago, we did a pilot for young adults. There was a real need for camp after 18,” says Murphy, noting leadership wrestled with why campers who aged out couldn’t come back or attend for the first time. “It’s so important for socialization and independence. We have had a lot of success there.”
Each summer session is a residential camp, starting on Sunday night and running to Friday. During those six days, campers are able to enjoy a wide variety of camp activities from fishing, swimming, boating and hiking to talent shows and arts and crafts. Camp Aldersgate intentionally accommodates activities to make camp accessible for campers’ wide range of needs. From wheelchair-accessible canoes and zip lines to sound equipment for the archery range to help campers who are blind hit the bullseye.
“We want our campers to have five-star experiences, so our goal is to make each activity fully accessible and enjoyable,” Murphy says. “We want to set up each camper to be successful in what they want to pursue.”
Beyond summer camp, Camp Aldersgate also hosts monthly weekend camps for both the Kota and young adult groups. And in 2025, it expanded programming into a weekday model to reach even more campers and potential campers through field trips for special education classrooms or classes that meet the camper threshold.
With help from two on-staff recreational therapists, camp leadership is in the process of developing a year-round curriculum. Its field trips will deliver the same opportunities as camp sessions — learning through intentional play.
“One of the most important things that can happen for kids is for them to have some sort of experience with a world bigger than themselves, because it’s very easy to have a world that is me-centric. And camp lets them commune with nature, get away from the screen and see the world,” Jason says.
Aldersgate’s med camps resonates with the Chackos on a personal level. Jason and Kristin’s first-born son, Jude, was diagnosed with a rare genetic brain disorder, Joubert syndrome (JS), when he was just three months old.
Along with her work with Aldersgate After Dark, Kristin has been a board member of the Joubert Syndrome and Related Disorders Foundation (JSRDF) for the last five years. And through that work, their family has been able to attend JSRDF conferences, allowing Jude to meet other kids with JS.
“The conference was the first time Jude had been around other kids who also had the same diagnosis,” Kristin says. “He got to just be himself and not look around the room and think of the things that he can’t do that the other kids can. He saw all these other kids that are just like him, that he can be friends with.”
Jude’s experience and the Chackos’ leadership on both the Aldersgate and JSRDF boards have inspired them to try to bring a JS med camp to Arkansas during Kristin’s term as JSRDF board president in 2027, timing that will coincide with Jason’s stint as president of the Aldersgate board.
“I just kept thinking of how wonderful it would be if we ever were able to get a JS camp so they can be around other kids with the same disorder that know the same kind of challenges and the same kind of things that they might be going through,” she says.
Jason sees the camaraderie Aldersgate’s med camps build first hand.
“Lifelong friendships can come from camp,” he says. “There’s no judgment.”
While JS is extremely rare with a wide-range of presentations and needs, the Chackos are confident camp leadership will be willing to explore the idea.
“Sonya is such an amazing leader and has done a great job building out their team. Their team is very much focused on ‘How can we do it?’ You don’t hear the word no out there. You hear, ‘Okay, this is how we can make it work.’ It’s easy to be involved with an organization like that,” Jason says.
Beyond campers, Aldersgate’s work also impacts its seasonal staff and volunteers.
“We consider both our counselor and our CIT programs as much as we do the program for the individuals with special needs,” Murphy says.
Counselors receive intensive training and valuable experience they can often use for college credit and resume building. The CIT program is also a service to the wider community.
“We really consider it an advocacy program so that those young people going back to their schools, to their community, to their church can advocate for people that aren’t at the table or aren’t in a position to use their voice,” Murphy says.
Plus, as Jason can attest, working at camp is fun: “You’re getting to hang out with kids and go fishing, canoeing and swimming all while you’re getting hours.”
And, of course, Aldersgate impacts the campers’ families, many of whom are full-time caretakers for their kids.
“It’s an adjustment for the parents, but the families of campers trust the camp,” Jason says. “They know the kids are safe there.”
Aldersgate is uniquely positioned to offer that peace of mind.
“We are the only camp in the state that provides camp activities and programs set in nature for individuals with special needs and medical diagnoses,” Murphy says of the fully ADA-compliant campus with an on-site, first-class health care center. “We’re going to stay on top of whatever the situation is, whether it’s typical camp skinned knee or homesickness, or if it’s something more serious that we’re equipped to evaluate.”
The camp’s proximity to Arkansas Children’s, Baptist Health and CHI St. Vincent hospitals also sets Aldersgate apart from more rural camps that serve the same demographic. And to help campers and families feel even more connected, Aldersgate implemented a program in 2025 allowing campers and families to share photos and messages.
To deliver these five-star experiences to campers, counselors and families, Camp Aldersgate relies heavily on fundraising. For the summer of 2025, the real cost of one camper per week was $3,700, while the most the camp was reimbursed per camper was $1,500.
“There is a real need for us to raise those funds so we can say yes to every camper who wants to come visit with us,” Murphy says. “As you can imagine, even families with resources, the amount of funds they spend for medical care, medicine, therapy can impact a family’s budget.”
Events like Aldersgate After Dark help make camp accessible to every camper by directly supporting scholarships, necessary equipment and events like a s’mores night or end-of-session talent show. Hosted on Aldersgate’s campus, the fundraiser also helps showcase the 100 acres to new potential donors, sponsors and camper families. Each year the event offers an immersive, experiential theme, which gives attendees an elevated taste of the themes campers enjoy during every session. And this year’s theme, Big Sky, is a direct homage to the experience with nature Aldersgate offers each camper.
“This year it is all about encouraging attendees to remember those days of enjoying being outdoors and being able to do that actually outdoors,” Kristin says.
Going forward, the board and camp leadership also dream of being able to serve more campers on its grounds, which can currently serve 56 campers for residential camp.
Since the pandemic, Aldersgate’s camps have progressively had more and more sessions with wait lists, culminating in all but two sessions having a wait list in 2025. Weekend camps are also affected.
“We have a waiting list right now for weekends, and that weighs on me heavily,” Murphy says. “Those families, they have names and faces and souls, and they want to be served. And so we need to find a way that we can serve them.”
Whatever the future holds, Camp Aldersgate will move forward with the same intention it’s had for the last eight decades: creating a safe, barrier-free space for all.
Aldersgate After dark: big sky
benefiting camp aldersgate
April 24, 7 p.m. | campaldersgate.net/after-dark
PHOTOGRAPHY
JASON MASTERS
HAIR & MAKEUP
LORI WENGER
ON KRISTIN:
CLOTHING
BARBARA/JEAN
ON JASON:
CLOTHING
DILLARD’S, ROUND UP VINTAGE