By Sunayana Prabhu
MIDDLETOWN – Putting “faith in action,” more than 240 teens and adults from around the country performed weeklong home repairs in the Bayshore area.
Throughout the week beginning July 10, a cohort of high schoolers camped in Hazlet Middle School, slept on air mattresses in classrooms, woke at the crack of dawn and helped transform nearly 40 houses in Atlantic Highlands, Middletown, Keyport, Keansburg, Hazlet, Matawan and Holmdel.
The teens signed up for the program, run by the nonprofit Jersey Shore Workcamp, through their churches. Each volunteer paid $450 to participate in the Christian-based mission trip that takes a year and a half to organize, according to William Bechtold, a parishioner at St. John’s United Methodist Church, Hazlet. He and his wife Gail own Koch Flowers on Route 35 in Middletown and co-sponsor Jersey Shore Workcamp through their church.
“We raise $25,000 each year to do it,” Bechtold said, and the goal is “just to help people that have a need,” which mostly includes single parents, seniors, those physically challenged and residents in low-income homes.
Working in teams of five to six and chaperoned by one-to-two adult team leaders, the teens are required to sign a “behavior form,” Bechtold said, to adhere to certain rules. They must follow a dress code, never venture off campus without an adult and “act in a Christian manner.”
Jersey Shore Workcamp is part of the larger faith-based nonprofit Group Mission, that gathers ministries, youth ministers and teams from all over the country. The volunteers are from all denominations of Christian parishes and the projects are throughout the country and internationally.
The transformation is “unbelievable,” said Sharon Trey, a resident of Middletown who benefitted from the program. Her house had a caved in, above-ground pool that sat on her deck for a year. After volunteers drained the murky water from the pool, a thick layer of decomposing leaves remained and the pool couldn’t be rescued. But the teenagers were determined to refurbish the deck.
A team of 12 from Our Lady of Fatima Roman Catholic Church in Highland Lakes, toiled away in the July heat to build and fix railings around the deck. High schoolers who’ve “never seen a hammer, let alone used one,” learned how to operate drills, power saws and more tools to make the deck usable again, said Pat Kimball, an adult volunteer. The interior of Trey’s house also got a fresh coat of paint.
As a single parent, Trey said she wasn’t able to complete these projects after her husband’s death. The teens “fixed a lot for us,” Trey said. “It gave me faith in humanity.”
The kids, coming of age, realized the home repairs taught them more than physical skills.
Jasmine Maldonado scraped wallpaper, painted and cleaned up a mud room and living room. Maldonado wants to be a physician’s assistant, although she admits to leaving her own room “messy” back home due to a lack of time between demanding school work and extracurricular activities. The camp provided her with “a great way of making a real impact,” she said. Besides teamwork and good communication skills, the projects – bound by a mere week – also taught effective time management, she said.
Experiential learning is one of the reasons why Cole Herman, in his senior year of high school, volunteered for the project for a second year. A resident of Vernon, his first work camp was in Dexter, Maine, where he built a wheelchair ramp. At Trey’s house this year, Herman had to build support beams and stairs on the deck. He said he has learned new skills through the camp each year and enjoys helping others.
More information about the Jersey Shore Work- camp can be found on its Facebook page. The camp – started in 2003 – takes place every two years and returned for the first time since the pandemic. Although the service is free, very few people know about it. “One of the issues we’ve had in the past 20 years is getting publicity,” Bechtold said. Homeowners can apply for work to be done through the group’s Facebook page or by asking at participating churches. The next camp will be held in 2025.
The article originally appeared in the July 20 – 26, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
