DES MOINES, Iowa — It has been about a week since the deadly EF-4 tornado hit Greenfield. But even as the town continues to recover from the tragedy, kids in Greenfield are spending the afternoon playing and smiling.
This is possible thanks to a national organization called Project Camp. Ozzie Baron, a team leader, shared that the group decided to come to town to offer a break to Greenfield parents.
"We're a national nonprofit that does emergency relief, child care," Baron said. "So anytime there's a natural disaster, we can pop up a day camp anywhere in the country in about 48 hours."
Parents who sign up for Project Camp receive free child care. The program will even recruit familiar faces to help out.
"We have about 40 kids signed up per day for the rest of the week. We can always take more, and we source local volunteers from Greenfield in the surrounding areas," Baron said. "So there are friendly faces, teachers, youth facing professionals that these kids know, that work with these kids."
Volunteer leader Laura Blome believes older kids have been crucial to the clean-up efforts.
"The football team is here. They've been here, the wrestling team, we've had kids, our own kids, who've come along with us, when we've been here every day that have been unloading, packing, helping, doing anything they can to lend a hand," Blome said.
High school seniors have even sacrificed their graduation party's catering and donated it back into the community.
"Several of the kids were planning to have their graduation parties last weekend, and a lot of them selflessly said, 'I can't celebrate when my friends don't have a home'," Blome said.
It's not just fun and games at Project Camp: the organization is helping kids heal.
"Building paper airplanes looks like building paper airplanes, but we do provide spaces for kids to be able to talk about what they went through with other kids in ways that make sense to them and our sort of healthy resolution healthy processing for the kids themselves," Blome said.