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Service Projects

"Save the Cedars" - April 2006

"Cedars for the Cedars"
As appeared in "Around The Towns" by Elizabeth Moore in The Star Ledger on Thursday, May 11, 2006

Though Paul Shultz, a junior at James Caldwell High School, grew up in a section of Caldwell called The Cedars, he and other members of his school's Interact Club recently realized that there weren't many cedar trees left in the neighborhood.

The Interact Club is a community service club at the high school sponsored by The Rotary Club of The Caldwells. The club's goals are to promote leadership and service, both locally and internationally.

Interact club members were looking for a community service project, and student Colin Ryan came up with the idea of planting new cedar trees for Caldwell residents. Shultz, Ryan and other club members - including Mike Rolli, Alex Weckenman, Kaitlin Somers and Maggie Mallon - set out to make it happen.

The students advertised their project through a brochure they gave out to residents. Then they made t-shirts that said "Save the Cedars" and sold them for $10 each to offset the cost of buying the cedar trees. The students purchased 200 trees and spent a weekend in late April going door-to-door offering to plant the trees.

"We knocked on doors and explained what we were doing," said Shultz, who said students divided into three teams to blanket the neighborhood. After planting the trees, homeowners were offered an instruction sheet on how to care for them. Though they worked for two days, students said they still had some trees left over when the project was done.

Shultz said the club members hope to plant the remaining trees at a local park for people for people to enjoy. "I enjoyed it because I love to being outside and working hard," he said. "When I come back in 10 or 15 years to visit my parents, I'll be driving around the neighborhood and I'll see the trees."

That won't be hard to do, because Shultz admitted that his dad was one of the club's biggest supporters, planting 10 cedar trees in their yard.