Absolutely Incredible Kid Day 2026-Salem News
As featured in the Salem News:
Camp Fire North Shore hosts letter-writing campaign
By Michael McHugh
“SALEM — More than 1,000 children from across the North Shore were celebrated on Thursday during “Absolutely Incredible Kid Day,” an annual national letter-writing campaign designed by Camp Fire North Shore to honor children with letters of love and encouragement from adults in their lives.
The day has been celebrated annually since 1997 by Camp Fire, an organization that provides nature-based preschool, afterschool care, summer camps, and teen initiatives to youth across the country. However, this year was the first to have been established by proclamation by Gov. Maura Healey, declaring that March 19 would be celebrated as Absolutely Incredible Kid Day across the commonwealth.
The proclamation invites other organizations, businesses, and school districts to write letters to the children in their community to tell them how incredible they are, with youth from across all the organization’s locations reading letters at their after-school sessions the third week of March.
“The proclamation made it so that across the commonwealth everybody knows they’re welcome to join in this letter writing campaign, and how special it is,” Camp Fire North Shore Chief Executive Officer Laurie Hamill said. “Kids often feel isolated, and our hope is that every child who walks through our doors feels like they belong here and can be successful and remain healthy. Today boosts their confidence and lets them know that they are important and loved.”
Every year, Camp Fire North Shore sends out notices to parents, elected officials in Lynn and Salem where their students primarily reside, businesses, school districts, and partner organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club, The Gregg House, St. Mary’s of Lynn, and LEO Inc., who write to individual students about what makes them special.
Parents gathered at Camp Fire North Shore’s Salem location on Thursday to listen to their children read aloud the hand-written letters they received from caregivers, Camp Fire staff, school staff, and more.
“For me, today is a culmination of a lot of emotions, because the road that we commit to pave for these kids is not an easy road to pave, and we commit to it every single day,” Ricky Doleo, site manager at Camp Fire’s Salem location said. “Today is important because it takes just a moment for us to see that (parents) being here means everything to children. Because you may show up for them every single day, but it’s on days like this where we honor them that they really start to look around.”
For Tabitha Simone and her nine-year-old daughter Riley Levangie from Lynn, the day was an opportunity for Simone to express her pride and love for her daughter. “I am so proud of everything you are accomplishing,” Levangie said, reading the letter from her mother. “I love how nice you are to the people around you, and I’m proud to see the kind of friends you surround yourself with. Keep shining bright my beautiful, kind, loving, smart, caring, and carefree girl. I love you more than words could ever say.”
Levangie, who has been attending Camp Fire’s programming year-round since 2021, said that the letter made her feel “absolutely incredible,” and that her favorite part of attending the camp was the people she’s met.
“She looks forward to it every day,” Simone said. “We’ve had a good relationship with every one of the counselors that we’ve worked with. I don’t trust my kid with a lot of people, but I feel so comfortable for her to come here every day with everyone. She loves the adventures they have when they take off in the woods —it’s a lot of fun.”
Last year, the Camp Fire North Shore expanded its services in an effort to be more inclusive by hiring a full time Director of Behavioral and Inclusion Services
and five behavior technicians to work with kids with disabilities. “There’s about 12 to 15 neurodivergent kids integrated with kids who are neurotypical,” Director
of Behavioral and Inclusion Services Michaela Hamill said. “We provide support like visual schedules that are rooted in the principles of applied behavior analysis. What inclusivity means to us is including kids that need more support in our regular programming, and accommodating them by modifying the curriculum so they can participate.”
After reading their letters, students and parents worked together on activities such as decorating tote bags and creating bookmarks from materials collected from nature.
“Camp Fire is all about uplifting and supporting absolutely incredible kids, and that’s what today is all about,” Camp Fire board chair Drew Russo said. “Whether it’s their parents, their teachers, Camp Fire staff, or other grown ups in their lives, this is an opportunity to show how much these kids mean to them, and how much of the work that Camp Fire does is so important in helping them at a critical stage in their lives and development.”
