I’m a business analyst at EPAM Budapest and also a mother. I have two boys, both of them are already in school. When finally, the summer holidays comes in school - the so expected freedom and leisure time comes for the kids. But the worry for us parents comes as well: „Who is going to take care of the kids for 11 weeks?” We have some options like family vacation and a few weeks at the grandparents but there are still so many vacation weeks left without any care for the children. If you are with kids this must be familiar to you too.
This summer we had an extra option for summer holidays: EPAM Active and Fun Summer Camp. It lasted for 8 weeks, covering almost all the summer school holidays and hosted kids aged from 4 to 14. The coworkers of the Balambér alapítvány organized the camp activities and took care of the kids, and EPAM provided the place created especially for kids - next to EPAM’s Budapest office.
So each morning we came together with the kids to „work” and went home together from mom’s workplace. It was so exciting for the kids: they used the same turnstile as mom does, and we watched together the exhibited building-model at the entrance of the office. And it was convenient for me too to have the kids near me, and I could even have a quick look at peek them and say hello during lunch time. I really liked the opening hours of the camp: it lasted till 7PM so I could finish my work without having to hurry to pick them up at 4PM (as it is usual with other camps). And whenever I showed up earlier the kids sent me back to work J, because they still wanted to finish their “csocsó” competition, pizza preparation, some arts&craft activity or just wanted to have their dinner together with their new friends.
My 7 years old little one said: “It was fun because there were so many exciting programs. And I made new friends, the best one was Viktor. There were little kids too and I helped them with the swing in the playground. Grund is such a cool playground!”
The kids had many outdoor programs. My little ones favorite was the visit to the Aeropark and the laser tag game.
Laser tag game:
My big one preferred the visit to the Skanzen Szentendre where boys could try out reaping and they fed animals while the girls prepared bread and butter for them and cleaned the house.
He also enjoyed the visit to the dinosaurs’ exhibition.
They had also different arts&crafts activities that were enjoyed even by boys and naturally lots of games:
As I’m an uneasy and worried mother I checked a few things: the bus used for traveling to outdoor activities had seatbelts, the kids had fresh fruits every day and enough to drink, the staff really cared about the kids' safety (e.g. they had camp T-shirts and hats and they even provided a raincoat for rainy days). Everything was well organized, so no worries!
And finally: I was so surprised and proud when on Friday afternoon I got an email from my big one with a little movie created by him with his pictures from the camp and with my favorite song, saying “With love to Mom” :)
