MANCHESTER, NH – Boy Scout John Larochelle hopes to utilize his Eagle Project to forge a long-term connection between Troops in New Hampshire and the Hillsborough County chapter of Sleep In Heavenly Peace, a nonprofit group that builds bunk beds for kids who are currently sleeping on the floor in our state.
John is partnering with SHP to host a bed build Saturday Jul 30 at Camp Carpenter in Manchester. The build will produce five bunk beds, utilizing volunteers that John has recruited in an assembly-line setup. The volunteers do not need any previous carpentry experience or special skills. SHP provides experienced volunteers to run each station and give instruction.
John is with Troop 118 in Manchester and attends high school at Spark Academy of Advanced Technologies. He has participated in several SHP build events hosted by students of Manchester Community College, where Spark Academy is located. The remarkably well-organized and well-run build events impressed him and inspired him to come up with the idea to partner with the organization for his Eagle Project.
His hope is to get other local Troops excited about what SHP is doing, because one of the core values of Scouting is community service and he thinks connecting the two organizations would be a way to help both, as well as local families in need.
John says, “I’m building bunk beds in partnership with the nonprofit organization Sleep in Heavenly Peace. The beds will go to some of the roughly 2,000 kids in our county that currently sleep on the floor. I’m going to set up several volunteers in an assembly line and we’ll build the beds over the course of a few hours. The build will be at Camp Carpenter on July 30 from 10 a.m. to noon. I wanted to reach out to other troops in my area to try to get more volunteers, provide a service opportunity for other Scouts, and potentially foster future cooperation between Sleep in Heavenly Peace and Scouting.”
This is one Eagle Project that could have far-reaching benefit for many of NH’s kids.
