‘It really takes a village’

Dana Moroz is on the other end of the line and the manager of the Sunshine Fund can hardly contain her enthusiasm.

With the summer winding down and school on the verge of being back in session, Moroz was asked about the 46th season of the program that sent children in need to 31 accredited camps across the province and northwestern Ontario.

Although the final numbers are still being calculated, it was a banner year for the program, which benefited from the Free Press Sunshine Fund campaign that ran throughout the past several months.

“We had over 700 kids that we supported to go to summer camp,” said Moroz, noting the cost of doing so eclipsed $300,000.

“I’d like to take the opportunity to thank our donors. It really takes a village to get all of these kids to camp. There’s a lot of work that goes into the programming and it’s nice when it all comes together and the kids all enjoy (their experience). Seven hundred (children) was our goal and we were happy to be able to help that many.”

Based on some early projections, those numbers are expected to rise once again in the summer of 2027.

“Every year we’ve had more and more kids, so we don’t anticipate that to go down,” said Moroz. “We went from 603 to 658 to over 700 in the last year, so we think the trajectory will just continue to climb.”

Many of the individual stories were told in the pages of the Free Press, but Moroz mentioned another one of the highlights that warmed the hearts of the staff at the Manitoba Camping Association.

“We had a family that made a special trip to our office from out of town just to thank us in person for supporting them,” said Moroz. “So, you can tell that it means the world to those kids to get to camp and they cannot go without us. That’s pretty special when they show up at our office and show up at our door for organizing it.

“As the Sunshine Fund, we want to forward those thanks to our donors and our granters because, without them, they don’t get to go (to camp).”

Supporting the program remains a priority for the newspaper and its patrons played a pivotal role in bringing joy to a hundreds of children’s lives once again.

“What the summer of 2026 has made clear is yet again how generous Free Press readers are,” Free Press editor Paul Samyn said. “We delivered stories about the Sunshine Fund and they delivered the donations so critical to the success of this long-standing charitable campaign.”

Interest in the program is at an all-time high and the demand continues to rise, both in terms of children wanting to take part and camps that want to be accredited and help share in providing an experience of a lifetime.

“With the way everything seems to be increasing, so summer camp (costs) increase as well and it puts it out of reach for more people,” said Moroz. “Some people could get their kids there, but now more people are calling us and saying, ‘We used to be able to do it (financially), but I can’t anymore.’ That’s another reason we have more kids we’ve been able to get to camp.

“Another interesting thing is that we have new camps that are reaching out and wanting to see how the accreditation process works, so they can get on board with us and get the standards in place so that they can actually get funded for Sunshine Fund kids. It’s not just kids from the city that need our support. In every pocket of the province, there are some financial hardships.”

The registration process for 2027 Sunshine Fund campers opens in January.

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