Tyler Perry will send Creative Steps campers to Disney World

Six-year-old Creative Steps camper Dajuan Tucker doesn't remember much about his last trip to Walt Disney World. He was only four years old, and has vague memories of water slides and meeting the superhero Spiderman.

Thanks to multi-millionaire media mogul Tyler Perry, he'll get another chance to review the costumed characters and rides at the Orlando, Fla. theme park later this month. Perry announced Sunday that he was sending the Creative Steps campers, each with a guardian, on an all-expenses-paid trip to Disney World.

"It feels good," Tucker said. "I'm excited" to go there with friends from the camp.

Perry, a popular African-American producer, writer and actor, announced the trip on Sunday in a written statement posted on his Web site and sent out to fans.

Creative Steps Executive Director Alethea Wright said she was "ecstatic" when Perry's staff first contacted her with the offer last week. About 60 campers will fly out on July 31 and return August 3.

"Some of these children have never been on a plane," she said. "This is going to be such a memorable experience."

When she told the campers on Friday that they were going to Disney World, Wright said they started "screaming at the top of their lungs."

The trip is one of many offers made in recent weeks to campers at the Northeast Philadelphia day camp Creative Steps, who were disinvited from The Valley Club in Huntingdon Valley earlier this month.

The Valley Club has been sued by one parent and faces another suit from the camp amid allegations of racial discrimination after campers said they heard racially-charged comments while swimming at the club on June 29. The swim club disinvited them several days later and refunded their membership fees, claiming it would be unsafe for the more than 50 children to swim there. The club president said the issue was safety--too many children in the pool--and not racism. Club officials declined further comment.

Perry - named last week as one of Forbes Magazine's top 10 highest-paid men in Hollywood - was not available for comment as he is filming on location in the Bahamas.

In the statement posted on his Web site, Perry explained his decision.

"I want them to know that for every act of evil that a few people will throw at you, there are millions more who will do something kind for them," he wrote.

He wrote that when he saw television news reports on the camp, "I said I have to do something for these children. I can't let them think that they are inferior because of the color of their skin."

Erik Tucker, 39, said his son Dajuan will be accompanied by his mother, Stacey Tucker. Eric Tucker, a fan of Perry's work, was impressed by the gesture.

"He doesn't live in Philadelphia," he said. "For someone to reach out like that, that's really touching."

Perry is a television and film producer, best known for feature films like 2005's "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" and television comedies such as "Tyler Perry's House of Payne." Perry, who also directs, acts and writes for film and the stage, runs a production studio in Atlanta, GA.

The New Orleans native began writing plays in the 1990s. After several unsuccessful years - he writes on his Web site that for a while he slept in his car - he booked his first play, "I Know I've Been Changed" in 1998. His first film, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," which Perry wrote and starred in, debuted at #1 nationwide when it opened in 2005.

He opened Tyler Perry Studios in October 2008, the first African-American-owned studio in the U.S.

Perry is one of the most high-profile individuals to lend support to the camp, but Wright has received offers from individuals throughout the Philadelphia region and across the country since the alleged incident at the club.

The campers returned to Huntingdon Valley on July 13 at the invitation of Ed Riley, co-owner of the Delaware Valley Gymnastics Academy. They spent the afternoon trying out different gymnastics equipment, running through an obstacle course and jumping on a moonbounce.

Riley said he offered the gym to the camp free of charge to show the children and the rest of the world that "Huntingdon Valley is not this bad place its made out to be."

Wright said that the outpouring of support has helped the children cope with hurt feelings over the last few weeks.

"People of all ethnic backgrounds and races have reached out to these children," Wright said. "I think it's positive that these children are seeing that."

Contact staff writer Zoe Tillman at 215-854-2771 or ztillman@phillynews.com