For the fourth year in a row, the Catholic Heart work camp came to Montague this June to participate in several community service projects in the Muskegon area.
The camp is a nationwide effort with 20 service weeks this year spread throughout the country. Jacob Peterson helped lead the Montague camp again; during his college days, he participated in the camp as a staff member.
This year, the campers, more than 350 of them, concentrated many of their community service efforts in the McLaughlin neighborhood of Muskegon Heights, working with the Give Me Five initiative; Peterson estimated that about 30 of the 52 small teams of workers were in Muskegon Heights throughout the week. The Give Me Five group, started about a decade ago by resident Helen Anderson Williams, hosts periodic cleanup efforts, each in a different five-street area of the city.
“It was a good mix of everything,” Peterson said. “We definitely did a lot of trash pickup. The Give Me Five (group) even rented a large dumpster that they dumped halfway through the week and we refilled again. We helped empty out a lot of trash from people’s homes and did a lot of yard work around people’s homes. There was an awful lot of painting and repair to people’s front steps, windows and doors.”
Other campers went to Holton and teamed on construction of an access ramp at an elderly couple’s home, helping ensure they are able to stay in their home going forward. That project brought Catholic Heart together with the Disability Network of West Michigan.
Another project the campers completed during the week was dissembling various tables, chairs and desks that the Montague schools are no longer using. The materials were donated to the Samuel Omogo Foundation, named in memory of St. James Catholic Church pastor Fr. Peter Omogo’s brother, to be used in soon-to-open new school buildings in Omogo’s native Nigeria.
Most of the week’s campers were from either Michigan or surrounding states, but there were some visitors from Minnesota, South Dakota and Pennsylvania among the group.
It was a tough week of work amidst the hottest week of the summer so far, though Peterson said it ultimately made the service even more fulfilling for the campers.
“It felt so good to have that fulfillment,” Peterson said. “It was a particularly difficult year because it was so incredibly hot that week and there was all that construction at Montague High School, which was still gracious enough to host. Having 350 week-long guests probably didn’t help them. It was really spectacular to see some of the incredible stuff that got done.”
The St. James youth group, numbering about 15, and Peterson will participate in another Catholic Heart work camp next week, traveling south to Huntingburg, Indiana. He said he feels fortunate that Montague has been able to host a Catholic Heart camp four years in a row, with a fifth tentatively scheduled for June 15-21 next year.
“There have been quite a few that are not able to keep doing it year after year,” Peterson said. “Back when I was in college and participated as a summer staff with them, they used to have close to 60 cities on the schedule. There were quite a few cities that probably did a camp for more than 10 years. After the pandemic, they’ve dropped down to maybe 20-something cities that have been able to host.”
