Boy, do I have a story for you. Last Tuesday was the 20th annual meeting of something called the Barnstable County Human Rights Academy. Twice a year, students from schools all over the Cape send delegates to spend time together and compare notes. We’re used to having kids from all over the Cape meet to compete in sports. But at the HRA, they don’t compete. They collaborate.
For years, the Riverview School ran a program they called A Walk to Water. Girls in many parts of Africa, instead of school, have to bring water, sometimes from over five miles away, in buckets balanced on their shoulders on a pole. With money they raised, the Riverview kids spent each year’s proceeds paying for wells to be dug in as many villages as they could afford. Just to make things better for people they would never, ever meet.
I think it was Dennis-Yarmouth High School that came up with an anti-bullying program. It worked really well at the middle school next door, so when the state government was drafting anti-bullying legislation, one of the teachers brought the project team to the State House. Wouldn’t it make sense for lawmakers to hear from some kids who knew what they were talking about? Some of the language generated by the students ended up in the final bill – which passed.
Other kids wrote letters for Amnesty International, demanding release of prisoners of conscience.Some high school kids put their money where their mouth was. Learning of the suffering in a place called Darfur, they decided that rather than spend tons of money on dresses and tuxedos and limousines, they would have what they called No Prom for Darfur. They went casual and sent all the money they would have spent on themselves to suffering people in a foreign land.
Cape Cod Academy kids ran a massive multi-school project called Shelter from the Storm. They invited the best singers, dancers, and musicians from schools all over the Cape and staged a massive benefit concert at the Tilden Arts Center every February — for 12 years. These combined efforts raised about a quarter of a million dollars by the time I retired and COVID hit.
It was part of the concept that the kids would pick the recipient of the money raised. Over the years, their concerts rebuilt 10 living units at the Safe Harbor Shelter for battered women and children. They financed two Stand-Downs, partnering with the Duffy Health Center and the Veterans’ Outreach Center. For two successive summers, veterans could access free dental clinics, medical and psychiatric services, job counseling, and help finding places to live.The Duffy center got funding to start an Opioid Addiction Center for teens. The Faith Family Kitchen in Hyannis was able to feed everyone they served for a year.
I’ve witnessed 40 meetings so far and everything that every child did, they did for the benefit of someone else.COVID put a huge dent in the HRA’s program, and now it’s building back. I would love to see some school on Cape Cod start the Shelter concerts up again.
The next day was Wednesday, and I travelled up to North Plymouth High School for their third Be the Light benefit concert. Same idea as the shelter concerts. Michelle Lewison is the spark plug up there but just like Shelter, it takes a huge team months to find over 15 sponsors, audition and pick talent from both Plymouth North and South high schools and decide among themselves who they want to help with all their efforts.
This year, the kids decided to help HOPE FLOATS, a local bereavement program that counsels and supports people who’ve lost someone precious to them.
It was a fantastic performance, featuring bands, acapella groups, dancers, singers — both folk and rock. Something new, they invited 2 outside groups: a group of senior ladies who did some soft dance routines, and a senior choir. This is hardly stuff that kids this age would be looking at on Tik-Tok, and I wondered how it would go. When the dancers were finished, the crowd gave them a thunderous ovation.
Then came the oldsters’ choir. Their second number was sentimental and to my astonishment, the kids got out their cell phones, switched on their little lights, and waved them slowly in the air over their heads. The whole darkened auditorium was transformed into a little galaxy of moving lights. And when it was over, the old folks got a standing ovation.
I was there to take photographs, but I turned to one of the girls who was sitting on the front row near me and told her that these old people will remember what she and her friends had done for the rest of their lives. She looked at me for a second to see if I really meant it, then teared up.
This is what young people are capable of despite all the obstacles they face. They spent months of painstaking effort on top of their studies, on top of their sports, to serve others. And then when the opportunity was in front of them to give a bunch of seniors the experience of a lifetime, they went for it. Damn, I loved those kids.
It’s as old as the Colosseum. The Emperor extends his arm. “To show my love for you,” he cries, “I will make other people suffer on your behalf.”
The antidote for that dates to the Colosseum too. It was the defiance of certain victims who took the tyrant out of the center of things and put their God in his place. “To show my love for You,” they said, “We will heal other people on Your behalf.” On one recent morning and on the following evening, I think that’s what I saw. I think I saw the answer.
Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. Email him at [email protected].
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