Working Hard Reaps Untold Rewards For These Work Campers

By Shannon Hicks

Rochester, N.Y., is home to nearly a quarter of a million people. The city is home to the Eastman-Kodak and Xerox corporations, and near Charlotte Beach on Lake Ontario, Genesee River Gorge and Falls, Seneca Park Zoo, amusement and water parks, and a high-speed ferry to Toronto.

The city of 250,000 residents is also home to a growing number of unemployed, elderly, and working poor. Combine those economic conditions with the region’s harsh winters (an average of more than eight feet of snow annually), and it is not hard to figure out why so many people can use help with home repairs and weatherizing.

More than 50 young adults from Newtown — members of Newtown Congregational Church, Newtown United Methodist Church, and St Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church — joined 350 young adults from across the country earlier this month in heading to Rochester for one week of their summer vacation. They worked in small teams, or crews, in a neighborhood where 40 percent of the residents live in poverty. They went to work camp.

On Sunday, July 16, hours after having returned to their own beds, hot showers, and clean clothes, many of the young adults attended the worship service at Newtown Congregational Church, and some spent a few moments at the pulpit sharing some thoughts.

They spoke of how affected they were, from the moment the arrived in New York last week to the last views of their work sites, knowing that they were leaving one small corner of the world better than it was when they had arrived.

One work camper said he remembered pulling into town the previous Sunday morning, looking around and thinking, “We’re definitely not in Newtown any more. … Seeing Rochester and living there for only a week made me appreciate all that we have here.”

Another talked about how important it was to be a good Christian, of how participating in this annual project helped bring him out of his shell.

Choking back tears, one young lady said she would always remember how proud she felt when her resident thanked her crew for making his dream come true. Her crew, she said, had built a wheelchair ramp for her resident’s home so that he and his wife could go outside together more often.

Work camp in Rochester began when “campers” began arriving in town on July 9. Groups spent time checking in, unpacking and trying to settle in to their home for the upcoming week — John Marshall High School. The building’s classrooms served as bedrooms for small groups of campers.

“There was no air-conditioning — we had to bring our own fans, and there weren’t a lot of outlets — and we slept on airbeds,” said Erica Vacaro, a St Rose member and first-year work camper. Even with those drawbacks and more (sandwiches for lunch every day, dinner served cafeteria style, incredible heat to work in and the initial shock for a first-year camper of trying to work immediately on a project with people she didn’t know), Erica said she is already looking forward to next year’s work camp.

“As Christians we are called to serve others,” she said. “This is what we’re called to do and this is how we live our faith. If it doesn’t conflict with my youth group conference next summer, I will definitely go back to work camp.”

By the evening of July 9, the first of the week’s daily evening programs was offered and all of the campers and adult chaperones met the members of the crews they would be working with for the week. Once the crews started to become acquainted, it was time to choose each person’s jobs for the week.

“There is a job for each person of the crew,” said Vicky Truitt, an NCC member and a chaperone on her fourth outing this summer. “The Break Maker packs the lunch for each day’s worksite, and Devotion Leader has a prayer session at the site each day.

“Progress Reporter lets the work camp officials know how work is progressing and whether they think their crew will need some help or not, and the Organizer has a first-aid kit and keeps track of the work sheet that describes the repairs the crew is supposed to tackle,” she continued.

“Quartermaster takes a tool inventory each day and checks out any tools that are needed for the next day’s work, and Work Director coordinates the efforts of the crew and makes sure they are on schedule,” Mrs Truitt said.

Days started at 6:45 am and it was hard for anyone to sleep late thanks to very loud music that was piped through the school’s PA system. Breakfast was followed by a morning devotion (taking a scene or passage out of the Bible and, through discussion or presentation, getting a better understanding of it), and then everyone left the high school by 8:30.

On July 10, crews drove to the homes they would be working on and in meeting the people who live in those homes. Then they started working. Most days, the crews worked until midafternoon, returning to the school building by 3:30 to try to get a shower (warm, if they were lucky). Errands were run at this point, and then dinner was served between 5 and 6:30 pm.

Evening programs were offered at 7:30, and they ranged, said Mrs Truitt, from “Christian rock music, biblical Scripture readings [and] prayer. Sometimes you would sit with your work crew and sometimes you would sit with your [hometown] youth group.”

At 9:30, evening devotions would close the loosely structured format of the day, and free time would run until 11.

Campers’ Experiences

Erica Vacaro, who will be a senior at Newtown High School this year, usually spends part of her summer with St Rose’s youth group participating in the Steubenville Teen Youth Conference in Attleboro, Mass. After six years of church retreats, she was ready to try something new.

Her initial plan was to attend the Steubenville conference and participate in work camp, but conflicting schedules meant she had to make a decision.

“Last year was the first time at work camp for many of my friends, and they came home speaking so highly about it,” Erica said last week. “The church retreats were great for me, they were spiritual, but I saw work camp as a good way to put my faith into action.”

Erica worked on a crew with two people from Ohio, and one each from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. They painted the first two floors of a three-story home and rebuilt a set of stairs for the home’s deck.

“The first day we finished half of the downstairs and we were feeling pretty good,” Erica said with a laugh. “Then the site coach arrived, assessed our work, and added some extra jobs.

“It was daunting, but we all worked very hard and finished everything by Friday,” she said.

Carol Ann Smith, a member of Newtown Congregational Church, admitted she initially had no interest in giving up a week of her summer vacation this way.

“Most of my friends at church were [going to work camp]. My mom thought it would be a good idea, and that I would enjoy it, but I didn’t want to go at all at first,” she said. This year marked the fourth time the NCC Junior Deacon participated, and she has been returning willingly since her first work camp experience in Holton, Maine.

This year she and her group did work on a house owned by Stogie, a mother of five who had a hard time saying thank you.

“She was initially quiet, kept to herself a lot,” said Carol Ann, “but I think it was just hard for her to show her appreciation. She and three of her children went to the reception we had on Friday [for all work campers, chaperones, residents, and their children] and they were really into it, singing and everything.”

Like everyone else, Carol Ann worked hard during her week in New York. She and her crew painted rooms, hallways, and stairs at one house, and when they finished that work earlier than planned they helped another crew finish painting its one-story home. They finished that project too, so they helped yet another crew who was scraping and painting a three-story house.

“There’s something about seeing the after-product, knowing that you’ve helped someone who cannot help themselves, whether physically, financially, or whatever,” said Carol Ann. “It’s just an amazing atmosphere,” she continued. “I don’t know how I’d experience it any other way.”

Erica Vacaro agreed, adding, “To come together, five or six complete strangers, always seems to work. It’s very powerful.”

Like Carol Ann, Matt Cole is a veteran of work camp. This was the fifth year for the NHS graduate to participate and it ranks even higher than a major milestone the 18-year old recently reached.

“I started [work camp] because I had always enjoyed repairing people’s homes,” said Matt, who has volunteered during a number of AmeriCares HomeFront projects in and around Newtown. “It helped me feel like more of a contributing member of society.

“Recently, it became more of this highlight of the year thing. I found this year’s trip to Rochester to be possibly more important to me than graduating high school, to be honest,” he said. “It opened my eyes more to the fact that those who have the ability to help someone should actively go out and do it.”

The NCC and St Rose group trip followed an itinerary offered by The Group Workcamps Foundation, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization located in Loveland, Colo., which organizes short term mission trips in the United States and abroad.

According to Donna Miklaszewski, one of this year’s chaperones and one of its organizers, NCC first participated in work camp in 1997 as an “add-on” to a group participating from Trinity Episcopal Church. In 1998 NCC formed its own group, and invited members of St Rose to join them. The two churches have worked together since then.