On their own: Northport high schoolers continue service work despite challenges

For years, students in the Northport High School service club Students for 60,000 (SF60K) would spend their time away from school – their winter and spring breaks, specifically – serving others. 

In more recent years, club members would go to the Iviani region of Kenya in February, where they helped build community school houses. And in April, they’d go to Kermit, West Virginia, where opioid-related overdose deaths are still some of the highest in the nation.

So when those trademark trips were discontinued earlier in the school year, a group of students took it upon themselves to continue what they started, in any way they could. Last month, 13 Northport high schoolers and three parent chaperones boarded an Amtrak train to West Virginia, where (after 21 hours of travel) they worked independently of the school district to help further a mission they established in 2019: to bring drug awareness and education to one of the hardest hit communities in the country, to build lasting bonds with the people they met and to serve those in need.

NHS senior Colin Cote helped plan this past April’s trip to West Virginia with fellow senior Sky Cleary. It was Cote’s third time back.

“The biggest takeaway from the trip this year was the importance of continuity,” he told the Journal. “Once you start something, it’s important to finish it. Students for 60,000 owed it to our own community and the community of Kermit to continue breaching the gaps of polarization within our country. By returning this year we proved to ourselves and the surrounding community the importance of keeping a relationship alive despite the challenges that stood in our way.” 

A long history  
Since the group’s inception in 1986, SF60K gave high schoolers real, tangible ways to serve those in need both here and abroad. Founded by Peter White, the group was formed to raise money for food and clothing for the estimated 60,000 homeless people in New York City at the time. Six years later, in February of 1992, White organized a trip with a dozen students to the Chacraseca region of Nicaragua, where students visited a poverty-stricken area and built an entire village “from the ground up.”

The group took at least two trips there a year through 2008, when White retired. The tradition of traveling to Nicaragua continued under new leadership for ten more years (and 20 more trips) until 2018, when a level three travel advisory was issued for the country.  

With travel to Nicaragua now out of the question, Northport High School social studies teacher and new SF60K advisor Darryl St. George had to pivot – he chose to take the student club to West Virginia instead. The choice was personal: his 21-year-old brother Corey died from a drug overdose in 2012, after a long battle with addiction. Corey’s death led St. George to research the nation’s drug crisis; in doing so he discovered Kermit, West Virginia, the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. 

St. George connected with Marlene Spaulding, executive director of ABLE Families, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering families in the rural Tug Valley area of northern Mingo County, West Virginia to break the cycle of poverty. He asked Karen Paquet, then a teacher at the high school, to help chaperone the trip. 

Together, St. George and Paquet led four trips to West Virginia, each time cementing a growing bond between the students and families they met and served. In 2019, 2023 and 2024, an exchange program brought nearly two dozen Mingo County students to Northport and East Northport, where they were hosted by SF60K families; together they took on local acts of service, including community beach cleanups, and other educational activities. 

Service – in both action and understanding – had become a mainstay of the SF60K group, Paquet explained to the Journal back in November, after the Kenya and West Virginia trips had been dropped by the district. “Service must include listening – hearing what those we serve need,” she said. Serving a community means understanding where community members were, where they are and where they dream of being, she continued: “Only in that state of empathy can service be of value.” 

It’s that type of service seasoned SF60K students hope to continue. 

“We took matters into our own hands”
Members of SF60K have a way of speaking with clarity and confidence; Northport High School seniors Sky Cleary and Matthew Munson are no exception. The two arrived for an interview with the Journal at the same time, from separate directions (they were clearly texting one another from their cars, so that they could approach in unison). They were friendly, jovial and maybe a bit shy, for a second. Once they got to talking about SF60K, however, they were self-assured and unhesitating in their convictions. These kids know how to care. 

Cleary and Munson spoke candidly about the initial disappointment they felt when the trips to Kenya and West Virginia were cancelled. Both students have been to Africa twice and, to date, have made four trips to West Virginia between the two of them. Last summer, Cleary’s family hosted three Mingo County students in their Northport Village home during the exchange. 

“The school district wasn’t able to support our trip down to West Virginia for a multitude of reasons,” Cleary said. “Because of that, we took matters into our own hands. We did what we needed to do to make it happen. And I’m really glad it happened.” 

(When asked in November about the discontinuation of the two SF60K trips, district officials told the Journal that the club was asked to “utilize a reputable travel organization for its domestic and international trips to ensure that all insurance and liability issues associated with trips of this magnitude are properly addressed.” Those liability and procedural issues have since been resolved, according to the district. New club advisors “are working diligently with the incoming leadership to ensure that the club has the opportunity for a domestic and an international trip in upcoming years,” district officials said.) 

Three parents volunteered to be chaperones of the independent trip, Cleary said, and travel plans were arranged. Cote was in contact with Spaulding, from ABLE Families, who “stepped up tremendously to make the trip possible for us by creating an itinerary and setting us up with our service for the week, bringing the trip to life,” Cote said. 

In years past, the SF60K students who visited West Virginia attended a service at Spaulding’s church, led by a pastor named Keith. This year was no different; Cleary said the services are always impactful. A couple of months before the students arrived in West Virginia, the Kermit community was significantly impacted by devastating floods. An 80-year-old resident’s deck, already in poor condition, had rotted away with much of it growing mold and all of it unusable. 

Outside of church, Pastor Keith guided the kids on the reconstruction of the deck; he taught them how to use power tools and provided supplies to completely restore the second story structure, build supporting posts, and secure the deck with a new and safer railing.

It wasn’t the only work the students did while there. 

Finding common ground
“I feel like for me, there is so much education that still has to be done,” Cleary said about the drug epidemic in West Virginia. Over the years, students from Northport and East Northport learned that most of Mingo County’s economy relies on coal: “coal mining, coal transportation, all of that,” he said. 

Cleary explained how local miners are bent over for hours a day chipping away at coal – causing damage to their back, their knees. They’re often left in so much pain that they get prescribed opioids. 

“And then the doctors,” Cleary said, “instead of properly weaning them off, they just keep prescribing them drugs and then they try to quit them cold turkey, but at that point, they’re already so addicted.” It’s an addiction that not only affects the individuals, but has repercussions for the miners’ families, their children and the community overall, Cleary and Munson said. 

“Every year I went back it became more important to me,” Cote said of his time in West Virginia. “I think it mainly has to do with the community. I grappled with the injustice in how some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet were completely exploited by the pharmaceutical industry.” He said the trips to Kermit completely changed his life – and his perspective.  

The kids referenced a common lesson St. George taught when he was the group’s advisor, on perception. While some stereotypes may try to divide us, Munson said, “we’re really not that different.” 

“Something Mr. St. George loved to do was talk about our differences because, you know, West Virginia and New York are kind of polarizing states,” Munson said. He spoke about the differences in politics, being from states that lean more conservative or liberal, and how stereotypes make it seem like the students should have nothing in common. “But we’re able to find common ground, we’re able to break through those barriers,” Munson said. Most of the kids stay in touch throughout the year; Cleary said he texts with his West Virginia friends almost daily. 

A large focus of this last trip was on drug education; schools in both Kermit and Northport have issues with drugs, Munson said, adding that when asked about their own experiences, almost every student on the trip had a personal story about how drugs or alcohol affected them or someone they knew. 

Together, the students talked about what programs each of their districts have to raise awareness about drug use and combat it; Northport-East Northport (NEN) students, for example, are required to take health classes to graduate. A big portion of that education is about drug and alcohol use, smoking and vaping, and overall awareness, Munson said. 

“Down there, they really don't have that,” Cleary said. NEN students were able to talk to people in the Mingo County health department, “and they were really shocked to hear that that’s something every single kid in high school does here.” 

Cleary and Munson discussed with the Journal what they thought has been working best regarding drug education in the district; Cleary said videos showing people high on drugs attempting to complete a task – building a bookshelf, for example – were impactful. Munson said hearing personal, firsthand stories from people affected by drugs and alcohol made an impression on him. “You really don't understand the effects of all of this until you have been affected by it yourself,” he said. 

Sharing stories with the students in West Virginia has helped to unite them over the years, and has built a bond that transcends the distance between them. “I think that’s a really big part of this trip,” Cleary said. He also thinks that service in the community – including fixing that deck – provides another sign of hope to the people in Kermit that “people do care about their community. People do care about the elders in their community. People aren’t just writing them off because their town is struggling with drugs.” 

From here on… 
While the past year may have been rocky, Munson and Cleary’s goal in going to West Virginia, “was to try and lay a foundation that the underclassmen can build off of next year,” Munson said. “And I think we did a pretty good job of that.” 

For Munson, one turning point in this whole experience was realizing it doesn't take other people’s permission to go out and get work done. “When there’s service that needs to be done, there’s a way to get the service done,” he said. “You really have to put in the work and the effort, and have that drive to really be committed and passionate about community service to be able to go from, ‘Oh, this is really unfortunate. We can't do this,’ to ‘Okay. Here’s our next trip. Here’s what we’re going to do.’”

Cote felt the same. “It is true that I was very disappointed the school couldn’t facilitate a trip back this year,” he said. “Primarily because I felt the younger kids within the club were being robbed of the opportunity us seniors had to see such a different side of our own country. Besides this, I decided to not dwell on it for long, as I knew I was leading a very motivated group of individuals, peers and friends that cared equally for the continuity of this project,” he said.

Cote, Cleary and Munson are still active SF60K members; together they’ve helped organize staple fundraiser events (such as the group’s annual SHANTY), with some of the funds raised continuing to benefit their efforts in West Virginia and Kenya. The kids are working hard on keeping SF60K what it was when they first got involved, and what Peter White and his successors hoped it would always be.

“I believe the club is the most influential and important in the school as it offers a different perspective to service,” Cote said. “While one of our main goals as a club is to provide aid to our community as well as others financially, we equally prioritize the experiences of hands-on human-to-human service where the help you provide someone else brings you emotions such as gratitude and fulfillment.”

More than anything, Cote added, he will remember the people, the “hundreds of strangers that opened their lives to us while we were in town and allowed for this connection to survive. I will also remember the Northport students, my friends, who never shied away from the opportunity to go back and stand up for something they believed in,” he said. 

Cleary has already signed up for service work at the University of Vermont, where he’ll be studying computer science in the fall. One of the reasons Munson chose to attend Tufts University is because of the variety of community service programs they offer.  

They say their experiences with SF60K, and especially their time with St. George and Paquet, helped them make the best of this last year, to forge past any challenges.  

“I think a lot of that came from what we learned from Mr. St. George and Ms. Paquet in the past few years,” Cleary said. “They definitely instilled in us a confidence and this belief that if we really put our minds to it, we can do it and we can help others and we can achieve what we want to do. We are still doing the work. We are still here.”

Looks like they are going to be “here” for quite some time.