HOP To It program teaches rewards in helping others

“The most important thing you can give someone is yourself,” Bangor Police Officer Daniel Frazell told a gymnasium full of Fairmount School pupils Friday.

Frazell’s message wasn’t new to the Bangor pupils. Nearly 400 fourth- and fifth-graders were gathered to be recognized for 940 service hours they had put into their community during the past month.

The program, called “HOP To It — Help Other People,” was part of the school’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education program with the Bangor Police Department.

The importance of helping other people was only half the message school and DARE officials hoped they had left with the pupils. The intent is to raise the pupils’ self-esteem by showing that they are important to other people and an important part of the community.

“Kids that have a lot of self-esteem don’t have to turn to drugs for answers,” Frazell said.

Under the HOP To It program, pupils were asked to do four hours of work that would be useful to someone else. The school’s goal was set at 700 hours. Work that was done included helping civic organizations, senior citizens, churches and their families. Many pupils worked four to 10 hours, with one enterprising youth putting in 45 hours.

As a final goal to the program, pupils from every class brought in cans of food to be given to the Hope House in Bangor. Pupils in Janet Dunham’s fourth-grade class presented Michele Gilbert, from the Hope House, with a check for money that they had raised collecting bottles on Earth Day.

Also at the assembly, Principal Peter Prescott received on behalf of the school a plaque recognizing the pupils’ efforts.

Frazell said he hoped to expand the program to reach all of the fourth- and fifth-graders in Bangor.