Youth leaders help town

A team of eighth-grade students at Brewer Middle School has a problem.

They want to prepare and serve a meal at the soup kitchen on Ohio Street in Bangor. But they don’t have any food; they don’t have any money either.

These 13 students, hungry to solve their problem, are Fleet Youth Leaders. Sponsored by the bank that has branches throughout Maine, the statewide leaders program encourages students to improve their communities.

Made up of students in grades six through nine, leadership teams are required to devise a project such as feeding the needy or helping the elderly. The team that best meets the goals of its project will win a trip to Washington, D.C., according to a Fleet Bank newsletter.

“And who knows, a Fleet Youth Leader of today may become a national leader of tomorrow,” the newsletter stated.

Although working at the soup kitchen surely will represent a gesture of good will, serving food to needy people — tentatively scheduled for Dec. 22 — is not the goal of the team from Brewer Middle School. They want to promote recycling.

Advised by Alan Whittemore, a Brewer city councilor, the team originally had planned to develop a curbside recycling program at Brewer. Maine voters killed that idea when they rejected the state’s proposal to bond $10 million that would have given communities money to start recycling programs.

So the students regrouped and modified their project. But what does serving a meal at the soup kitchen have to do with recycling?

Tins, jars and other food containers that will accumulate while the students prepare the meal can be recycled.

“You’re leaders so you’ve got to sell the idea to the people,” Whittemore told the team Monday.

“Let’s not think about money,” Whittemore said. “Let’s have a philosophical group.” That’s a group that works without money to improve the community, he explained.

Brainstorming at Monday’s meeting, the girls sat on one side of the classroom and the boys sat on the other. The segregation did not impede the generation of ideas, however.

The students will call on Brewer residents and ask for simple food donations. They hope some parents will transport the food in the family car, and Whittemore said he will help cook.

As part of the overall goal, the team also talked Monday about how to make it easier to recycle a specific material.