BREWER – Fourth- and fifth-graders at State Street School held their hands up in salute as Mayor Michael Celli swore them in Wednesday as official Community of Caring ambassadors.

“You are now deputized,” he told the children, who ranged in age from 9 to 11.

Community of Caring is a character-building program designed to integrate five values – family, caring, responsibility, respect and trust – into every aspect of school.

Celli made the pupils ambassadors to help expand the program into the community.

The Community of Caring program started in the Brewer schools in 1994 and was the first program of its kind in the state. It has always involved parents, students, teachers and some members of the community, and now is the time for more people to get involved, Celli said Wednesday, just before reading two proclamations to the pupils.

And since people from outside the community work and study within the city, Celli invited all who want to join in supporting the program.

Volunteering, performing random acts of kindness, helping a neighbor or even just providing a smile to someone at the grocery store are simple acts that count, Superintendent Daniel Lee told the pupils.

“One person can make a difference in making our community better,” he said. “If one person picks up litter, that’s making a difference.”

The Community of Caring program was founded in 1982 by the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation and promoted by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and has been adopted by almost 1,000 schools nationwide and in Canada.

Then-Brewer High School nurse Mary McGrath brought the program to the school community’s attention in 1993, and her first call was to then-elementary Principal Lester Young, who now is the school department’s business manager. The program started the next year.

“Mary read a little blurb on it and called Lester and it just took off,” Becky Bubar, Brewer High School principal, said after Wednesday’s school gathering.

Both Young and McGrath were honored with plaques from the city and school department for their initiative. The pupils, teachers and others gave the local program founders two standing ovations.

In the 12-plus years the program has been operating in Brewer, students in kindergarten through 12th grade have contributed by participating in activities, said Joan Staffiere, Capri Street School and State Street School principal.

The list includes helping the March of Dimes, Muscular Dystrophy Association, the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, and numerous other groups and individuals in need, and includes a water drive for Hurricane Katrina and other Gulf Coast victims in 2005.

“I think it kind of opens their eyes to the possibility of helping other people by doing something beyond themselves,” Staffiere said.

And she has noticed that her pupils have begun to venture out on their own.

“My fourth- and fifth-graders seem to be taking part [in activities] outside of school – the MS walk, Hike for the Homeless, pet walks, doing services at the humane society,” Staffiere said. “We had one girl [who] donated her hair to Locks of Love,” a program that provides cancer patients with real-hair wigs.

Celli proclaimed May 14-18 Community of Caring week, and unveiled city signs that will be posted at all roadways into the city that proclaim Brewer a Community of Caring.