Kids events at Camp SoulGrow take root

Kids in multicolored wigs, oversized shamrock top hats and other dazzling accessories are jumping all around the funky-painted Camp SoulGrow bus before getting on the float that will carry them down Edgemere Street in Montauk’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Once on the route, they throw out beads and other assorted goodies to those cheering them on, including their parents, who are enjoying their children’s moment in the sun on a windy and chilly day.

One of the ‘kids’ is much older than the others, but she’s just as excited as the underage riders.

At age 30, London Rosiere has already been many things: a dancer, a charity worker at a Kenyan orphanage, a marathon runner and a successful businesswoman in the corporate fashion world, working for shoe retailer Jimmy Choo and other high-end brands. But the Montauk resident’s biggest success is evident when a bunch of kids see her and run to hug her.

After all, according to her business card and email address, Rosiere is “head kid” at Camp SoulGrow, a Montauk-based nonprofit she started in 2014 using an inheritance from her mother, Diane Troxclair Rosiere. She came back to Montauk in the offseason — she was familiar with the town from working at an East Hampton clothing store and running local marathons — to heal from her mother’s death in 2014.

“They are blessed to have London,” said Raini Ashare, 48, a Montauk resident and film editor whose daughter, Ryder Patrowicz, 7, attends some of the camps. “She is an inspiration to me, and her heart is with the kids.”

The camps are a series of 90-minute (or longer) creative sessions usually taught by local residents and business owners based in Montauk and surrounding communities. The workshop subjects range from hiking and hip-hop dancing to learning about ticks from a doctor and finding out what being a barista entails. The lessons often center on artistic endeavors, something that is important to Rosiere.

The idea is multifold, she said: to give children a sense of the opportunities available to them; to form friendships with other children; and to bind them more closely to their community. The camps are open to children 7 and older, and signup is simple, which Rosiere and the campers’ parents like. The sessions are also free, so there is no distinction among those who can and can’t afford to pay.

“I really don’t want to start charging families,” Rosiere said. “I want kids to just show up at whatever camp they choose and jump in.”

Kaia Wetzel 7, of Montauk, said she loves to come to the camps.

“We do fun things; once we went to a water park,” she said, adding that her favorite so far has been a sewing session where they made pillows.

Dominick Pileggi, 9, is also a repeat camper and Montauk resident. He helped spray paint Camp SoulGrow’s bus and said his favorite camp sessions have been water-based. Over the winter break he went to Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa and swam in the saltwater pool, and last summer he enjoyed a water slide at Camp SoulGrow.

Parents said they appreciate the laid-back nature of the camps, the acceptance of everyone and the variety of sessions to choose from.

“There’s no stress on anybody, including the parents,” said Jill Musnicki, 48, of Sag Harbor. Her daughter, Ravenel Ellis, 9, attends the camps. “And it’s very creative.”

Posting mail at the local post office, making their own concoctions at a local juice bar, poetry, oyster farming, ballet, silk-screening T-shirts, and surfing are just some of the almost 180 camps that Camp SoulGrow has run since its inception. Some are taught by Rosiere and others by local residents with a particular skill or talent to share.

The sessions — painting, yoga, dancing — mirror activities Rosiere said she found herself doing after her mother’s death.

“It was all the things that I was doing to heal myself,” she said. “I got hooked on the excitement the kids were having doing those same things.”

Rosiere, a native of New Orleans who was attending school at the University of New Orleans, had come to Manhattan to film a commercial when Hurricane Katrina hit her home state of Louisiana in August 2005. Her family evacuated to Texas and then returned to New Orleans to rebuild, but Rosiere decided to stay in New York. She got a job at Jimmy Choo and eventually enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology, attending night classes after work.

“I never had any intention of going to fashion school or living in New York City,” Rosiere said. “I got stuck and made the most of it.”

Her mother had a harder time coping with the hurricane’s aftermath. Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest storms in U.S. history, flooded the family’s home with four feet of water. Rosiere said her mother, an advertising sales representative for Conde Nast whom she described as “bubbly, vivacious and always smiling,” was devastated by the destruction and fell into a deep depression for many years. She died of renal liver failure at the age of 52.

As Rosiere coped with the loss of her mother and tried to figure out her own life, she set out for Montauk in the winter, but soon was faced with her own sense of isolation. Creating Camp SoulGrow helped her heal, Rosiere said, by fulfilling a mission to help others.

Summers are busy in Montauk, but in winter many of the businesses are closed and there is not much for children to do after school and on weekends. The camps fill that void.

On a recent trip to the Montauk Food Pantry, campers surround Rosiere as they come in. They help label boxes that will be put in bags to be distributed to those in need in the community. They fool around a bit while Alice Houseknecht, who runs the pantry, explains what the organization does, but they also ask questions: “Can anyone get food?” “Why do people need the food?”

It’s clear that this event — which ends with campers happily, and voluntarily, sweeping the tile floor — allowed the children to see a part of their community that they may not have known existed.

“She’s a very free spirit,” Brenda Munoz, 27, mother of repeat camper Alexandria, 9, said of Rosiere. “There is no one judging. Everyone helps out, and everyone is good to each other.”

That is the main mission of Camp SoulGrow, Rosiere said.

“I have watched the fisherman’s daughter and banker’s daughter become friends,” she said. “All kids are equal and in charge.”

‘We brought a heartbeat’

Growing and expanding young souls is hard work, and Rosiere continues to be a one-woman band with big dreams.

Much of what she has accomplished was based on a personal commitment to help children find their own creative souls. She does much of the work herself, from conceiving workshop ideas to hand-painting signs in the dance studio to painting much of the interior and exterior of Camp SoulGrow’s new bus, which seats 23.

Rosiere was able to secure the historic Third House as Camp SoulGrow’s headquarters. The rambling structure was built in the 1800s and is just outside of town in Montauk County Park. It sits on 1,200 acres where children can come to practice dance, play the various musical instruments lying about, paint a picture or just roll down the hills on a sunny day.

Dominick said he enjoys going to Third House.

“You get to see all the horses around, and we do a lot of fun stuff there,” he said.

The county-owned building had sat empty the past few years, so Rosiere petitioned Suffolk officials to lease it to the camp, and was given permission in June, fulfilling a wish to have a place the campers can call their own. The head kid’s hard work is evident in the building, which she cleaned out herself.

Since Rosiere believes an active body helps the mind and soul, she offers dancing and yoga classes at Third House, too.

“We brought a heartbeat to the building,” she said. “I want to have enough camps, every day. And if they want to come seven times a week, great. It’s giving them the power to find out what they’re good at and what they like to do.”

Rosiere said she has spent the majority of her inheritance making SoulGrow possible. To keep the camps coming and offer them for free, she is using her business acumen and boundless energy to raise money with grants and fundraisers.

Her expansion plans have already taken root. Rosiere is starting camps in Hampton Bays next month, something she hopes to spread to other towns on Long Island as she finds more volunteers to help in the organization. And she recently offered her latest adult camp for those 16 and up: Spanish lessons at a local restaurant. Camp SoulGrow is, well, growing.

“Watching my mom, her light turned off and not being able to find it . . . it can be the smallest thing that can turn that light back on for someone,” Rosiere said.