The Iowa Fire Sprinkler Contractors Association is hosting the first annual Burn Center Golf Invitational to benefit University of Iowa Burn Treatment Center Summer Camp for Pediatric Burn Survivors and community education for the prevention of burns.  

Lisa Falkers, RN, Burn Treatment Center and coordinator of the golf invitational, says the Miracle Burn Camp is located at Camp Foster YMCA on East Lake, Okoboji, and it is held the second week in July every summer. It costs about $600 per camper and all the funds are raised by donations and fundraisers throughout the year.  

"It is available to all pediatric patients ages 7 to 17 who have had some sort of burn experience.   The best thing about camp is that pediatric burn survivors are introduced to other children that have experienced similar injuries, and that's something that the majority of them don't have at home.  

"At camp they get to swim, sail, kayak, canoe, go horseback riding. They do a lot of arts and crafts, archery, riflry, they have 3-levels of rope courses, nature programs, and then just several other group sessions where they get to interact with each other."  

It is absolutely wonderful and so important to the healing process to bring children with burn scars together for a week at camp, says Falkers. "Here they're encouraged to build life-long friendships, they get that continued support, and they get to talk with other kids that have similar childhood challenges."

One of the community education projects is Kids on the Block Puppet Program that is taken around to classrooms and elementary schools. "We get to do skits and songs about burn prevention and fire safety. And that has been just wonderful, it's a great interaction in the classroom.  

"We try to do that along with the week of fire prevention. We also get to do school re-entry programs for kids who have been burned. We will go to their schools, do a slideshow presentation, do the puppets if it is age appropriate, and it's just a great opportunity. We also will help workers go back to their jobs and work with their employers on what they need to do," she says.  

The golf invitational is Tuesday, August 22, at Brown Deer Golf Course in Coralville. Registration is at 9:30 a.m. if you have not already registered. Lunch is at 11a.m. and then shotgun starts at 12:30 p.m.

The tournament is open to the public. "We did send out specific invites to the Midwestern fire departments, EMS, health care professionals, and then we also sent out a lot to our local community because we get quite a bit of support and we wanted everyone to be involved.   Anyone who wants to be involved is invited.

"In addition to golf, we are going to have an evening auction, where we're going to have silent auction on some smaller items that some local businesses have donated to us. And we also have some larger pieces that we're going to auction off at the end of the evening, so there's a little bit of everything," says Falkers. "Plus we're going to have brochures, we're going to have posters set up, we'll have pictures of the past camps and some paintings that all the kids at camp have done for us.

"We've got golf participation levels all the way from a Diamond sponsor, which is $2,000, to individual golfers that includes the tee and green fees, meals for the day, and a gift from us. So you can do anything at any level you would like," she says.

Falkers says non-golfers can support the burn camp too. "We take donations of any level, of any kind. We also are going to have some burn survivors come and speak and tell their story. It's an opportunity for people to meet a burn survivor, and I think it is beneficial."

For more information about the tournament, e-mail lisa-falkers@uiowa.edu or can call 319-356-2496 and ask for Lisa or say that they're inquiring about the Golf Invitational.

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