White House Author

Sheena Curley has spent the last 37 years teaching and working with special-needs and at-risk children and their families, focusing for the last 19 years on children and women affected by addiction. For the last two decades, she has been using her vacation time to help kids in the summer as the director of the Kiwanis Fresh Air Camp in Knoxville, Tennessee. The overnight camp provides a week of constructive activity for underprivileged children, who create arts and crafts, build friendships and enjoy athletics, games and other physical activities. Sheena even gets local service organizations involved—including members of her Kiwanis club, which also funds the program, raises money to send kids to camp and helps with administration. Sheena’s leadership fosters interaction between the community and the camp, which often includes kids who don’t qualify to attend other summer camps because of physical or psychological problems.