NORTH CALDWELL — For several years, 16-year-old Brittany Berman swam laps at Indian Head Camp to raise money for Project Morry, a youth development
program anchored by a free summer camp for inner-city kids. But this year, the spunky North Caldwell teen decided she wanted to do something more to help the nonprofit, which mentors participants year-round. Brittany set up a drive this spring to collect camp supplies at West Essex High School. As an incentive, she turned the two-week event into a competition among homeroom classes, with the winner getting a pancake breakfast. Now the 11th-grader hopes to expand the drive to include West Essex Middle School. At her home Monday in suburban Essex County, Brittany reviewed the handwritten letters she received from a Project Morry participant who became her pen pal. Maddie, an incoming sixth-grader in Connecticut, sent her stickers and a school picture and ended her letters with a series of postscripts. The two met this summer when Brittany and other Indian Head campers took a trip to visit Morry’s Camp in Glen Spey, N.Y. “She wasn’t lucky enough to afford to be able to go to camp,” Brittany said about Maddie. “It was great to talk to her, because I knew she was able to experience something that she wouldn’t otherwise.” More than 350 fourth through 12th-graders from the New York metropolitan area participate in Project Morry, which began in 1996 and is based in White Plains, N.Y. During the school year, staff members meet with the students once a month to set goals and check on their progress. The children are recommended to the program by their teacher, guidance counselor or social worker and join between fourth and fifth grade. All who finish the program graduate high school, staff members boast, and about 80 percent go on to college. The summer camp motivates the participants to do well academically: If their grades fall, they’ll have to attend summer school and miss out on four weeks of fun. The camp includes traditional outdoor activities but with an educational twist. Saul Arvelo, 23, a graduate of the first class of the program, remembers a day-long workshop when he was 16 that taught him step-by-step how to create a resume. “That was actually the blueprint that I use today,” said Arvelo, a Hoftstra University senior who secured an internship with VH1 this fall.
Arvelo now helps with the camp in the summertime: “It’s great as a kid, but it’s so much better when you’re on staff and give back. It’s so much better to pay it forward.”