Woodland church missionaries target hometown

Tears welled up in the eyes of Julia Damico, 13, as she thought back to the week’s events.

While painting rooms at Easter Seals, she met individuals with disabilities and special needs. And despite their disabilities, these individuals gratefully showered Damico and other volunteers with hugs and high-fives for their efforts.

“No matter how hard the work, it’s worth it,” Damico said of the experience. “They have to have other people help them.”

Damico and more than 70 other middle- and high-school students from Woodland, The Community Church gathered for Project B-Town June 27 through July 1. The week was filled not only with summer camp activities, such as bowling and broomball, but also plenty of time for helping others.

Students chipped in at places such as the Salvation Army and Easter Seals, assisting with much-needed cleaning, painting and other projects.

“When we told one group they were going to Habitat for Humanity, they had no idea (what it was),” said Student Leader Jennifer Passmore, also the director for Woodland’s preschool. “They thought they would be working with animals. It has been an eye-opening thing — people don’t have places to live.”

In years past, the youth have participated in Project B-Town’s predecessor — Mission Samoset. During the weeklong camp, students worked on improving the community center in Samoset that Woodland acquired from the county about three years ago. But with so much of the work already finished there, camp organizers developed a new strategy.

“This year, we decided to expand it and do more projects throughout Bradenton,” Passmore said, noting Manatee County helped locate service opportunities. “The more students that signed up, the more projects we’ve added.

“These students have expanded their horizons,” she said. “(They) are going to places within their own hometown they didn’t even know existed.”

Students said they loved getting involved in the community, whether it was cleaning out and organizing the Salvation Army’s food pantry, distributing food at the Samoset Community Center, sprucing up yards for local widows or collecting food for the Manatee County Food Bank, among other projects.

“I’ve learned a lot of things,” Travis Belanger, 14, said. “It makes you think about how good your life is and how the world is. It makes me want to help more.”

Thirteen-year-old Emily Lederer agreed. “We’ve gone a week without thinking about ourselves,” she said. “ (There’s) so much you really can do without.”

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].