Project VAN promotes service

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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter

For 20 years now, Project VAN (Volunteers around Needham) has been providing youth entering grades eight through twelve with the opportunity to participate in one-day community service projects around the Needham community. On Thursday, July 20, Project VAN was at Mitchell Elementary School helping with beautification outside.

“Typically we do nine days, but this year we’re doing six, due to some transitions we cut it this year,” Katy Colthart shared.

The project is run by Needham Youth Services and sponsored by the Needham Community Council. Colhart and Carolyn Tracey, a clinician when NYS, were in the field with the kids, helping them with weeding, gardening, and clean-up.

Over the course of the Project so far, the group has worked with a number of different Needham institutions, such as the Needham Community Farm, to help them harvest vegetables, pack produce, and do some weeding. “We went to the Needham Housing Authority and we helped with cleaning up their after school community program room. We were painting - really just giving the place a face lift, freshening up the place,” Tracey added. “We went to the Needham Community Council and did a big clean-up of their food pantry. We had students organizing the thrift store, and they also have a big donations of school supplies, so we sorted everything and did a big inventory to get them ready for the back-to-school shopping.”

The week after Mitchell, Project VAN will work with Parks and Forestry at Perry Park to help clean up that area. “It’s a great way for a lot of these kids to interact with services that they didn’t know about,” Colthart explained. “A lot of these kids might not have needed to use the food pantry or didn’t even know it exists. It really is a nice way for them to give back to their own community.” Some of the students with Project VAN have been coming back for years, which Tracey explained she believes proves the importance of the program as a whole. “When you set a precedent that this is something that’s important in the community and you get kids that are involved when they’re younger, you really foster that idea of helping in the community, which is great.”

Lucy Campbell, a rising senior at Needham High School, has been involved with Project Van for six summers. “It’s really rewarding to do work around Needham because you see it every day,” she said. “I’ve been doing it since middle school. My siblings have done it before me, so it’s kind of a tradition.”

A rising Junior, Nicholas Szeto, added: “If you get together with your friends and do it, it’s even more enjoyable. You get to connect with people of many different ages, so you get to form bonds with them and get to know your community a little better.”

While Tracey and Colthart were in the field, so to speak, Tracey stresses how much of a group effort the project is, including help from their summer intern and Maria Papantoniou, who handles much of the behind the scenes logistics.

“I always say Needham is a community full of volunteerism,” Colthart added, “but this is a nice program to get kids started on the path of volunteerism.”