A Heart For the Hungry

Kevin Chaves of Fort Salonga is anything but your average 15-year-old.

A model Boy Scout with Troop 539 in Kings Park, Kevin went above and beyond the requirement to incorporate construction in his Eagle Scout certification project and ended up building and stocking a 360 square foot storage space, complete with shelving, for the Gerald J. Ryan Outreach Center in Wyandanch.

The outreach center lost their food grant when one of their buildings burned down in 2007, and was having trouble providing emergency food packages for the hundreds of people seeking assistance each week. Over the course of five months, Kevin organized car washes and food drives all over town with the help of other troop members to raise enough money to rebuild and restock the center's burned down food pantry.

“I could have stopped there,” he said, “but I knew there was still so much more to be done.”

Kevin then kicked up his efforts by reaching out to Proforma Executive Business Services which agreed to sponsor his cause and donated magnetic ribbons which Kevin sold at 100 percent profit. Kevin ultimately raised nearly $9,000 through his “Have a Heart, Help Stop Hunger” ribbon campaign, $400 through a car wash, and brought in 3,000 pounds of food through his food drives.

It has been almost three years since Kevin began working with The Gerald J. Ryan Outreach Center and he is still as involved as ever. With all the work he's done, it was no surprise that he was recently elected Senior Patrol Leader by his fellow scouts and now oversees almost 50 scouts, plans trips and parades, and runs the weekly meetings.

Kevin saw what started out as a project as a great way to help others and, at the risk of sounding cheesy, said it's “something inside” that motivates his altruism.

It seems as if people like Kevin just don’t exist anymore. Kevin is a refreshing reminder that there are good people in the world, and with the holidays just around the corner we could all learn something from this young man.