By Owen Boss
Staff Writer
NORTHAMPTON — Northampton High School’s Key Club is back in action.
Organizer and high school junior Daniel Dietz said he decided to revive a local chapter of the oldest high school service club in the world after hearing from freshman looking for ways to give back to the community. "We set out on getting this group started up and so far it has been great."
About 25 students from all grade levels have been meeting every Monday from 7 to 8 p.m. to brainstorm ways to help their community.
Their work received a boost from an online chapter of the Kiwanas Club, a national service organization, which gave $500 to their cause.
The club's first event is a children's book drive, where Key Club members will hand out the more than 2,000 children's books they collected from classmates this school year.
"We're going to give out books, read to the kids and encourage all of them to take whatever books they want home with them," Dietz said. "Any books they leave behind will go straight to local libraries."
Elementary age school children are invited to the high school cafeteria Sunday from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Dietz said the group is looking for ongoing projects and community partnerships and welcomes outside speakers to the Monday night meetings. For information and any suggestions, contact Dietz at 587-1344.
NHS students in Haiti
When they graduated from Northampton High School last year, Milo Childs Campollo and Braeden Leinhart knew they wanted to take time off before college, but didn't know where or how.
Their quest turned into a two-week trip to Haiti, where they helped build housing for people displaced by last year's earthquake.
The two 18-year-olds say they felt compelled to help after a massive earthquake demolished much of the island nation last January. Two weeks after the earthquake, Childs Campollo's mother, Alison Childs, who is a registered nurse at Franklin Medical Center, left for Port Au Prince, Haiti, where she tended to the wounded as part of a multinational relief effort.
When she returned, Childs brought with her stories of the conditions in Haiti. She asked the two young men if they would like to come along on a two-week mission in November.
"They were just awesome; not that many teenage guys their age would be willing to go down there and live without hot water and television," Childs said. "They were absolutely fantastic."
Leinhart and Childs Campollo joined a construction program aimed at helping with the country's ongoing rebuilding effort.
"It was a totally eye-opening experience and it really made me appreciate all of the things I have," Childs Campollo said. "The trip made me really feel for the people who live down there and to see how messed up it is and how corrupt it is down there made me really want to help and keep on helping those people."
The boys helped build a house for 21 people who were displaced in the quake and had been living either on the street or in tents.
"I made a lot of good friends during my time there and just seeing the conditions that people were living in that long after the quake made me want to encourage other people to help, because they really need all the help they can get," Childs Campollo said.
Leinhart, who began taking classes at Greenfield Community College this past winter, said he too learned many life lessons from his two weeks spent in Haiti. The pair hopes to inspire other students to get involved.
They will share their experience and show slides from the trip at Longmeadow High School Dec. 20 and are hoping to make similar presentations at Northampton High School and other high schools.
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NHS musicians shine
Every year, members of the Northampton High School chorus, band and orchestra compete against musicians from area high schools for a chance to participate in a regional concert at the University of Massachusetts.
The competition, sponsored by the Massachusetts Music Educators Association, calls for high school musicians from the state's four western counties to learn sheet music, scales and develop their sight-reading abilities. After a round of auditions, the highest-scoring regional students are selected to play in an ensemble made up of the best high school musicians in western Massachusetts.
"Those who make it through the district-level auditions get to play at our big concert next month and some are selected to compete for a chance to play in our statewide concert at Symphony Hall in Boston in March," said MMEA Western District Chairman Bill Love.
NHS Band Director Deborah Coon said the following students were accepted to play at the regional concert, planned for 3 p.m. on Jan. 15 at the UMass Fine Arts Center:
Chorus: Lindsay Griffin, Georgia Lederman, Sarah Plotkin, Marguerite Suozzo-Gole, Wilson Sadowski, Rebecca Coates-Finke, Annie Arrighi-Allisan, Maria Ramsey, Kristi Spicer; Band: Melia Coletta, Benjamin DeMeo, Louis Gaudet, Aerin Thomson, Lisa Feiden, Annie Innes-Gold, Zoeth Flegenheimer, Sam Coates-Finke; Orchestra: Abby Adams, Benjamin Ramsey, Charlie Hale, Ethan Bein.
Concert tickets are $3 and are available at the door. For information about the concert series, residents are encouraged to visit the MMEA website: http://www.mmeaonline.org.
Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.
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